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What Early Software Was Influential Enough To Deserve Acclaim?

Posted by timothy on from the cultural-literacy dept.

theodp writes "That his 28-year-old whip-smart, well-educated CS grad friend could be unaware of MacWrite and MacPaint took Dave Winer by surprise. 'They don't, for some reason,' notes Winer, 'study these [types of seminal] products in computer science. They fall between the cracks of "serious" study of algorithms and data structures, and user interface and user experience (which still is not much-studied, but at least is starting). This is more the history of software. Much like the history of film, or the history of rock and roll.' So, Dave asks, what early software was influential and worthy of a Software Hall of Fame?"

6 of 704 comments (clear)

  1. McPaint source code by gbooch · · Score: 5, Informative

    BTW, the source for MacPaint is available online at the Computer History Museum:

    http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/

  2. The original UNIX source code by kthreadd · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl

  3. TeX by Dr.+Tom · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not only is TeX practically the first open source program, it is still in use (rewritten, tho), along with all the tools it spawned.

  4. Re:As an animator (Video Toaster Suite) by toejam13 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lightwave and the rest of the Video Toaster studio software was influential in that for the first time, you could have a quality video studio stuffed in a single computer. A lot of UHF and independent stations used 'em.

  5. Re:VisiCalc by jqpublic13 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Tell me, Microsoft, what games of YOURS are still being played 20 to 30 years later?

    Ummm... Solitaire?

    --
    Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.
  6. Re:VisiCalc by ChatHuant · · Score: 4, Informative

    Tell me, Microsoft, what games of YOURS are still being played 20 to 30 years later?

    Well, Microsoft Flight Simulator was launched in 1982, that is almost 35 years ago; Solitaire came with Windows 3.0, in 1990 (and believe me, there are many more people still playing Solitaire than ever played Colossal Cave or Zork). Minesweeper was originally part of the MS Entertainment Pack (also 1990) but was bundled with Windows I believe starting with Windows for Workgroups. Freecell came a bit later, can't remember exactly when, but was there before Win95, which makes it at least 18 years old, I'm sure there are more.