The 10 Most Influential Software Programs

A blogger took it upon himself to try to name the 10 most influential software programs ever.

Here is his list:

1. SABRE (IBM, 1964)
2. Maze War (1973)
3. Adventure (1975)
4. VisiCalc (VisiCorp, 1979)
5. WordStar (MicroPro, 1979)
6. Hypercard (Apple, 1987)
7. Photoshop (Adobe Systems, 1988)
8. Lotus Notes (IBM, 1989)
9. Mosaic (NCSA, 1993)
10. Minecraft (Mojang, 2009)

I think it's a really good list.

I am particularly impressed by his inclusion of Hypercard and Lotus Notes.

The omissions as I see it are:

• Sidekick (Borland, 1983)
• Turbo Pascal (Borland, 1983)
• PageMaker (Aldus, 1985)

PageMaker was the product that made companies want to buy a Mac. I was working in just such a company. I fell in love with the Macs, of course (I had an Apple II at home by then) and spent the rest of my time there trying (without success) to convince my manager than I should switch from an IBM clone to a Mac.

I discovered Hypercard on the Mac and (even though I only ever played with it) I thought was very exciting product with huge potential.

Turbo Pascal (which I never used although I did use Turbo Basic) brought tremendous innovation in the area of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE): the forerunner of today's Visual Studio and Eclipse.