Particular areas of software development rapidly change them plateau. I have an issue of Byte magazine from 1993. It was all about how RISC processors and next generation microkernels were about to take over the market. And yet here we are. Every new phone runs either an OS built in the 1980's (iOS), or a 1990's clone of a 1970's OS (Android). A RISC had a nice little run (ARM), but ancient x86 seems poised to wipe it out just like it did with all its previous competitors.
Modern "x86-based" CPUs are actually mostly RISC architectures under the Hood. Instruction sets are a mere front-end nowadays and don't tell much about the inner workings. Think of bytecode.
