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Author Topic: Nice Long Read: The Great Works of Software  (Read 5524 times)

mouser

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Nice Long Read: The Great Works of Software
« on: April 30, 2014, 06:48 PM »
Nice long blog essay looking at some influential software programs.

So I set myself the task of picking five great works of software. The criteria were simple: How long had it been around? Did people directly interact with it every day? Did people use it to do something meaningful? I came up with the office suite Microsoft Office, the image editor Photoshop, the videogame Pac-Man, the operating system Unix, and the text editor Emacs.



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Shades

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Re: Nice Long Read: The Great Works of Software
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2014, 08:05 PM »
A decent read.  :Thmbsup:

But I do think he forgot about the old, venerable CVS.

Agreed, not that many people are familiar with it, but CVS comes with a history of 24-25 years and did affect the way people treat and contribute to code...to this very day.

PUTTY might also be subject for inclusion as provides a very robust way of communicating with remote Linux machines for more than 15 years and more Operating Systems than you would think.

tomos

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Re: Nice Long Read: The Great Works of Software
« Reply #2 on: May 01, 2014, 04:49 AM »
A very enjoyable read :up:

At the start he mentions code:
Is it possible to ... enumerate great works of software that are deeply influential—that changed the nature of the code that followed?
but, then he changes the criteria to a different sort of influential (more about stamina and less about creativity?):
The criteria were simple: How long had it been around? Did people directly interact with it every day? Did people use it to do something meaningful?
-
which criteria could be used/stretched to say that e.g. the British Empire was 'great'. In fairness he is critical of MS Office, and of the *.psd file format...
Tom