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Software Hall of Fame

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40hz:
I always preferred the Mace Utilities myself over Norton. And PC Tools after that.

But the Norton Editor was a mainstay for me when it first came out. It was the first text editor I ever purchased.  :Thmbsup:

IainB:
Hmm, well now...my votes - off the top of my head and from experience - would include:

* ICL 1900 PERT.
* Pong - the 1972 video game from Atari Inc.
* VisiCalc on the Apple II (the invention of computerised cross-tabulation and "spreadsheets").
* Logica's RAPPORT - which included FORTRAN-callable subroutines to access relational databases.
* Sciconix from Scicon (a tool used in operations research - for linear programming and optimisation modelling).
* TEM - The UK Treasury Economic Model. An econometric modelling tool (ran on a Univac 1108) that was put into the public domain in the mid-'70s.
* PLATO from CDC (Control Data Corp.).
* Lotus Agenda.
* Lotus Magellan.
* Framework III-V, from Ashton-Tate.
* Microsoft Office products - Word, Excel, Access (because they are now ubiquitous and so useful).
* Adobe Pagemaker on the Mac. (the first desktop publishing tool.)
* MacProject on the Mac.
* Microsoft Project.
* CA Allfusion Process Modeller (formerly Platinum BPwin).
* InfoSelect from Micro Logic.
* Microsoft OneNote.

barney:
Sorry I missed this.  PCFile+, perhaps the original freeware/shareware relational database system:  I learned  :-\ relational theory on it as well as rudimentary SQL by using it.

I also used OS9 on a Tandy DOS 64K CoCo - multi-tasking, multi-window before Windows was, don't recall if 'twas earlier than or concurrent with DesqView.

None of 'em could hold a candle to current offerings, but for their time they were absolutely fantastic  :P.

Oh, yeah ... as I recall, OS9 allowed multiple OS windows - virtual machines  :huh:? what a concept  ;D! - so one app crashing didn't bring down the whole system.

40hz:
@barney- Ah the little CoCo! That was a fun computer. I still have one packed in a box in the attic someplace along with a TRS-80 Model III from the same era.   8)

You might be interested to know OS-9 still exists and is in active development. Link to the homepage here.
 :)

MilesAhead:
For programming on Dos, Turbo Pascal 3, Turbo C++ Pro 1.01.  The C++ Pro package came with Tasm, which made things a tad simper than using masm. Also got to actually use the C++ stuff I had been reading about for some time.

I don't recall the name of these Dos utilities but I remember there was a utility(probably from PC Magazine) that let you steal some video memory(I had Hercules graphics card with 256 KB ram) when running in "text mode" and use it as expanded memory on my 8088 XT clone. Also had a Dos disk cache program that would use the fake expanded memory.  Made it like getting disk caching for free.  Also PC Tools provided a file manager and defragger.

On Windows I'd have to say Delphi was a big deal.  Even now if I want to do Gui I try to find some tool where I can just drag the buttons on. I enjoyed writing Delphi components.  It was cool when you got it all working and could drag onto the form from the toolbox and it all went as expected.

I'd say the one thing totally ignored in PC development was the 80386 Segment Descriptor Table.  IIRC you could actually set up a 48 bit address space on a 386 if the OS used them.  But the lazy bastards just set them all to 0s.  :)

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