In looking over John Dvorak’s Top 10 Most Important Software Programs I couldn’t help but think “well what does this mean to me?” So, forthwith, I started my own selfish list of Top 10 Most Important Software Programs…for Me. When I think back to what got me started off in the computer world and then bits further along that kept me interested in it, this is it, in no particular order.
WordPerfect – The first word processor I learned to use properly, and I believe the first software that I actually purchased for myself, at a nice student price.
MS-DOS net send and Unix talk – since they’re not really full-blown software packages, I’ve combined them into one category described as: “Oh my gosh, I was IM-ing on a network before IM-ing even existed.” Good times. What potential.
Lotus 1-2-3 – I was a college intern for two summers at Lotus Development Corp. 1-2-3 was the first PC program I learned in great depth and breadth and I still think “slash file save” when I click on that little “Save” icon in Excel.
TRS-80 BASIC – My first programming language back when I hated programming because all we did was write programs for math functions in math class. I hated math, thus, of course I hated programming. Ha.
Symantec Think C – I have no idea what version I started on but it was my first full programming environment (sorry, I never counted Emacs though many geeks would) and it made the edit, compile, run, debug cycle smooth as silk.
My first graphical web browser – Sadly I can’t remember the name of the first graphical browser I used, but it worked over a slow terminal dial-up connection and soon after I was upgrading my account to get my hands on PPP and Mozilla.
VAX/VMS – The primary system we used for email and programming courses in college. Yeah, unix was mixed in too, but not as much as I’d expect looking back now.
Quicken – The interesting thing about Quicken was that its user experience made something very dreary (money management — blech) actually seem fun. I don’t use it anymore (thus my use of past tense), but I probably should.
DOOM – The original version. Without this I may have never entered the violent world of gaming (I hated shooting the dogs in its predecessor Wolfenstein 3D). Who knew that finding and wielding a chainsaw could actually be fun?
kermit (probably MS-Kermit) – with kermit, a modem, and a phone line I never had to go into the college computer lab. I could stay in my very own room. Except that sometimes it’s more fun to be sitting in lab with everyone else at 2am. And then 6am.