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Searching for the Oldest Running Application

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the mine-is-older-than-yours dept.

A columnist from InternetWeek has completed a search for the oldest running commercial software application. His results are interesting (note that he's mostly skipping over mainframe applications, just looking at PC-based apps).

3 of 433 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Mainframe by EdgeShadow · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't mean to be nitpicky, but if you'd bothered to read the whole article you'd have noticed that he mentioned a mainframe program called DATAMOD that dates back to October 1971, which is over 30 years ago. As the main focus of his article was PC applications, however, his article did not give much information on mainframe apps.

  2. It's SyncSort by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative
    The oldest commercial application, i.e. one sold as a software product, is SyncSort. SyncSort was one of the very first commercial third-party software applications. It was also the first to be patented. SyncSort, Inc. was formed in 1969.

    SyncSort was the first useful sort program to break the O(N log N) barrier (yes, this is possible, CS101 kiddies). This was a huge win for mainframe shops with their big tape-to-tape sort jobs. That's what all those spinning tape reels were doing on early computers. SyncSort cut days off some batch jobs.

    You can buy current versions of SyncSort. The old versions for IBM mainframes are still available, and you can get it as an Active-X control for Windows. So that's a 34-year old product, little changed in decades and still doing a useful job today.

    I did maintenance programming on a competitive product, UNIVAC Exec II Sort/Merge, around 1969. SyncSort was faster. They really did have a better, and patented, algorithm.

    1. Re:It's SyncSort by Quixote · · Score: 4, Informative
      > SyncSort was the first useful sort program to break the O(N log N) barrier (yes, this is possible, CS101 kiddies).

      Just because it uses radix sort it doesn't mean it isn't O(N log N). The radix itself is O(log N); you have to look at each entry at least once.

      Remember, we're talking theoretical issues here (since you brought up the O(.) notation).