You mean tecnhology like bounds checking, invented during the 1950's decade, with the creation of Fortran, Lisp and Algol, and every other language derived from them, with exception of C, C++ and Objective-C?
"Although we entertained occasional thoughts about implementing one of the major languages of the time like Fortran, PL/I, or Algol 68, such a project seemed hopelessly large for our resources: much simpler and smaller tools were called for. All these languages influenced our work, but it was more fun to do things on our own."
Then there is the whole issue of making it more interesting to look elsewhere instead.
When a door is locked I can still break in by throwing a rock to the window, yet most people do lock the door nonetheless, while most thieves only bother to break the window if there is anything actually valuable in doing so.
