Okay, so what's the oldest software that you still run on a regular basis...

My oldest daily driver is `ve', a text editor I wrote in 1984 and last updated in 1990. It was born on Coherent because I worked for the company which developed that OS. It has been ported to various UNIX flavors, DOS, MacOS, Linux, and BeOS. The last port was early/mid '90s to BeOS and was popular inhouse. A souvenir from my time with Be:

bebox2c.jpg

Image above taken w/Tele-Elmar 135 head on DSLR.
 
Oldest software I run has to be Notepad. I don't think they updated it since Windows 95, if not earlier.

I still run Office 2000 on all my PCs (Netbook came with Win7 and Office Starter, so I'm using that and hating it) - it has all the functions I'd ever need. My dad and grandmother worked as professional typesetters back in the old days, and even they never hit functionality-limits when using Office2k. Au contraire, newer versions have everything hidden in different sub-menus.

Even when it comes to gaming - in my humble opinion, Age Of Empires II, out 1998, is a peak still left unmatched by modern game-designers. I still play it weekly.
 
mtargz said:
Even when it comes to gaming - in my humble opinion, Age Of Empires II, out 1998, is a peak still left unmatched by modern game-designers. I still play it weekly.
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Some games age very well indeed. I've played the original 1989 version of Tetris on and off for about 20 years now (most of my life!). It's actually the game I've spent the most time on during the past couple of years, owing to my keeping a Game Boy Pocket in the bathroom...
 
xwhatsit said:
Kind of. It'll have Linux, with a C64 emulator on it. Over here: http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx

However it is pretty cool for one reason: the keyboard is fitted with Cherry Blues! No more of the original rubbish keyboard with binding keycaps and mushy feel. Now the keys will go `click' like a keyboard should!

Disclaimer: IBM Model M user.
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Hard to believe that would sell. You can already get C-64 emulators to run on Windows. I never got serious enough about that to see how one was susposed to use the old software disks.

tlitody said:
Well yes, learning low level programming languages is always a better option than the high level stuff cos the assembly level really doesn't change since the basics of computers haven't really changed. They just got faster resulting in appalling inefficient software applications that consume resources. Time was when you had to be able to code for highly efficient execution. Not anymore it seems. Just throw some cobbled together software packages at the problem and pray it works even though you haven't a clue what is really happening in the software. I blame it all on SQL the most non intuitive scripting language ever devised IMO. After that anything was good enough.
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Yep accountants took charge and showed profits (and of course fear of competitors) were more important. I am convinced that is part of the reason MS can't put out bug-free (and therefore more secure) OS and software.

Rico said:
My oldest daily driver is `ve', a text editor I wrote in 1984 and last updated in 1990. It was born on Coherent because I worked for the company which developed that OS. It has been ported to various UNIX flavors, DOS, MacOS, Linux, and BeOS. The last port was early/mid '90s to BeOS and was popular inhouse. A souvenir from my time with Be:

bebox2c.jpg

Image above taken w/Tele-Elmar 135 head on DSLR.
Click to expand...

Wow! Coherent. I lost my password or I would still use that just because I could. The company went out of business shortly after Linux became popular and downloadable on that new thing called the internet.
 
Okay, slightly off-topic but still...

I was a huge computer nerd back in the 90s when I was a teenager and my favorite PC game was Wing Commander II and III (though X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter was technically better).

I ended up with the Kilrathi Saga from something like 1995, which includes all 4 games. I also found Wing Commander V: Prophecy, but by that stage the WC series had gone completely to ****. There were better games out there but none were as immersive as the Wing Commander series. I think they were also one of the first to use 'interactive movies' as a major part of gameplay. Awesome. I also remember they hired a former porn star to play one of the female pilots.

I was also a big Championship Manager 1, 2 and 3 fan in the early 90s.

I tried loading up all the games sometime last year on my Windows PC at home using a DOS emulator, and for about a full day they were glorious fun.

Now I just wish they'd give each game a graphics makeover and make em look pretty. Leave the gameplay alone though!
 
xwhatsit said:
Does Unix count?

I suppose it's been upgraded a few times 🙂

I still use original vi quite regularly. Most of my editing is done in vim, though.
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Vim?! Blasphemy! I still use vi.

I used Emacs, but had to fall back on vi since most places I worked at could never agree either on the version or to install it at all (back when I didn't have root access). Vi is always a safe bet 😎
 
Does anyone remember 'Ready,Set,Go' for the Mac?
Still use a version on my eMac - must be 20 years old.
Commodore 64 - used to write programs for that - big move up from Commodore 16 & 32!

jesse
 
jesse1dog said:
Does anyone remember 'Ready,Set,Go' for the Mac?
Still use a version on my eMac - must be 20 years old.
Commodore 64 - used to write programs for that - big move up from Commodore 16 & 32!

jesse
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I used a couple of word processors with my Commodore 64. Also used to write programs for that...but by the time I figured out how to write machine language for it I had started using Macs.
 
vi usually on a Mac. The commands for this editor are so wired into my brain that I don't even need to think about them when I'm using it. I think vi was actually developed several years after Unix was created (which was in 1969 if I recall - an amazingly advanced idea for the time).
 
mmik said:
JCL, IMS, Cobol on S/360 and S/390 and I am 32 so some manuals have been written before I was born.
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At least someone is using real computers. And not "OS/360", BTW, at least not originally: just OS (for the System 360). They didn't need to distinguish it from other operating systems at the time, because there weren't any. I use it's lineal descendant (z/OS) every day (well, it's a living). I can't imagine there's been much maintenance applied to IEFBR14 over the years, and I'd reference that module every day.

And I'm "allowed" to write stuff like this in JCL:

//BIND EXEC PGM=IEWL,COND=(4,LT,COMPILE)

(If 4 is less than the condition code from the COMPILE step then don't execute the BIND step.)

That's a very, um, intelligent way to do conditional processing. And I don't think it's changed much since the very earlies.

The oldest packaged software I still use for PCs is probably Turbo Pascal version 3. It takes up 40K on a USB stick and gives me a functioning compiler. It's on every USB stick I have (as it used to be on every floppy disk I had). You never know when you might need to knock up some piece of once-off utility code. It helps to always have a compiler handy. (Though in these days when USB sticks give you so much storage, I keep a zipped-up copy of Turbo C++ as well. It's only a few megabytes, and I usually prefer to do things in C/C++ rather than Pascal. On real computers, though, it's assembler all the way.)

...Mike
 
Double Negative said:
Ha, nice. My buddy had one of these. At the time, the concept of using a 3.5" floppy made a lot of sense (this was pre-CF/SD). Of course, years later... I can't even tell you the last time I used a floppy - but it might very well have been around '98!

I still have my old PC (from around that time) with both 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives - mostly because a) I've used Macs since, and b) I've got a ridiculous software archive on both mediums dating back to 1982.

These days, everything's on DVDs. God forbid you have to reinstall an OS on an old box... You have to find something on CD! Or worse. Thankfully I've still got various DOS versions on 5.25" disk. 😛
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I gave the camera to my grandaughter. Maybe I'll get it back from her and send it to you (who has a 3.5 floppy disc reader now).
 
Double Negative said:
Ha, nice. My buddy had one of these. At the time, the concept of using a 3.5" floppy made a lot of sense (this was pre-CF/SD). Of course, years later... I can't even tell you the last time I used a floppy - but it might very well have been around '98!
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Took one on a trip to France and Italy about that time, summer of '98. Quality, by today's standards, was very poor. But it operated much as a digital camera would today and was fun because it had a really long optical zoom. Pictures came in around 30-60k, so you could actually fit quite a few on a floppy. Here's a pic of the top of St. Peter's in Rome, and the view from Eze on the French Riviera:
 

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I still use Pine via unix to check my work email. I'm not so knowledgeable about computer stuff but it sure as hell seems old to me! Love it though!
 
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