Posted on 12/18/2006 10:09:46 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Peter Coffee, an editor of eWeek magazine has published a list of 25 killer apps of all time. This list totally reflects his personal timeline in the computer publishing business and sets a benchmark for ‘killer apps’ although I’m a fan of his work. I’ve been in technology since 197x…’ Big deal. I wrote code on a DEC PDP-11 using a Hazeltine terminal at Univ of Miami back in 1979. The technology sucked big time.
Mitch Kapor made boucoup $$ from Lotus 1-2-3. Many of us cut our teeth on 1-2-3’s macros. The Lotus Magazine from the 1980’s was a GOLDMINE of information for spreadsheet nerds. My 1-2-3 macros were sometimes pages long and could repaint the bathroom and regrout the kitchen counter. Then came Excel with VBA and oh-my-God it was the equivalent of programming nirvana. 1-2-3 was reserved for the back shelf at Goodwill. And of course we didn’t have to shoe-horn it into dBaseIII+ > we just linked or cut-n-pasted it into MS-Access and instant database relativity. Woo hoo!!
So what is the real ‘killer app’ list? I could list my own. Peter has DEFINITELY set off an interesting discussion with this article. Sad part is, many folk don’t have tools in their toolbox and wouldn’t know how to maniuplate data (or want to, for that matter). But if you’re a ‘data guy’ (or gal) what does work for you? Does it work for your corporation? Many of us have jobs because we know how to manipulate data when others don’t. Makes for a strange ‘niche’ in life.
Like this one?
I'm still using my 2nd one to this day (bought in 1992 for $100, after my first one died). They can still be found on eBay for dirt cheap, and a few years ago I bought a dozen or so as backups.
Best damn keyboard ever made --- IBM Model M
I still like Word Perfect and think it's better than MS Word. Could I be wrong?
Like this one?
I'm still using my 2nd one to this day (bought in 1992 for $100, after my first one died). They can still be found on eBay for dirt cheap, and a few years ago I bought a dozen or so as backups.
Best damn keyboard ever made --- IBM Model M
We had an IT department where too many were playing rogue during the day. The players went so far as renaming it vi(1) or a.out and installing in their local bin to avoid "rouge" showing up in the system activity reports. Finally, we installed a version with an empty magic user password so that people would get bored of the game... sure enough that did it.
Looks much like mine....
Very simular.
ksh, grep, sed, xargs, perl, vim, excel, nastran, patran, matlab
sed >> sos
Fortran was the language of engineering long before Matlab.
But I doubt it's even taught at engineering colleges anymore.
does say how to record on your VCR while watching another channel?, how about setting that darn clock?
i used an old word processor package called Professional Write because it was an idiot's word processor, and i didn't have a lot of time to learn new programmes.
BTW, i started out on a DEC PDP-8 in 1972. We still had the old card readers that one would punch out much the same as a Florida Ballot (without the chad problems). The yellow paper punch tape was a way to enter programmes into the teletype terminal. Learned BASIC on that machine. If the line voltage dropped below 117VAC, the system would crash.
*twitch*, *twitch*, Lotus Notes, *shiver*
Technically speaking Windows 3.0 was not an OS.
DOS 4.0, DOS 5.0 were the Operating systems. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 were applications that overlayed the OS....i.e, you could delete the Windows directory from the command line using DOS.
With the advent of Windows 95....Windows WAS the OS.
I'm more partial to Microsoft Money...but Quicken was certainly first.
Too true, I grab any I see at yard sales. There's also a 'compact' "M" without the number pad that's just as solid and 'clicky' and about four inches shorter.
For good reason. FORTRAN was my first fluency. I used to say that I made a very nice living for five years knowing only VMS FORTRAN and Huygen's Principle. I still get drawn into reverse engineering someone's FORTRAN mess from time to time, but only the only good reason for using FORTRAN anymore is job security, no one else will ever want to "own" your code.
My first PC was an Apple ][ w/ 8K (8192 bytes) of RAM. Serial number 2752. Had to load/store programs from cassette tape. Apple's floppy disk drive wasn't available until 3 months later.
I think Quicken for DOS and WordPerfect 5.1 were the best non-GUI programs of their generation. They were preceded by Wordstar (probably the best app of all time) and Lotus for DOS (a ripoff of Visicalc, Calcstar and Supercalc), probably the best of their generation.
Software generations are about 3 years.
From my perspective, there haven't been any new killer apps for a long time, just updates to the older stuff. I guess multi-player, internet based games are killer, but I don't have the time for them.
I still think the Wordstar 3.3 interface was the best. Who needs mice and arrows? (3.3 because I could hack the colors with Norton Utilities)
When I start delving into a new FORTRAN code I grep for # of occurrences of GOTO and then divide that number by line count. That forms my cr_ppyness percent (CRP).
Anything above 0% CRP is bad. Fortran 90 never really caught on at least where I work. I still have to deal with a lot of Fortran 66 with arithmatic ifs etc. as if 77 isn't bad enough.
But our new employees over the past five years are experienced in Matlab and that is the direction we're trending. There is a reluctance to go with a proprietary language though.
VisiCalc. Other apps have appeared, but that is the only 'killer' app.
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