BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution)
The Berkeley version of Unix that gave the world the sockets networking API, the C shell, the vi editor, and the BSD license.
Tools
The compilers, IDEs, and systems that programmers actually used.
326 entries, all primary-sourced
DEC VT100
The DEC VT100, introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1978, was a video display terminal whose ANSI-compatible escape and control sequences became the de facto standard that virtually every later terminal and terminal emulator copies.
TeX
Donald Knuth's typesetting system, begun in 1978 to produce publication-quality mathematics and technical documents, built around a box-and-glue model and famous for a version number that converges to the digits of pi.
Intel 8086
The Intel 8086 (1978) was a 16-bit processor that founded the x86 architecture; its 8-bit-bus variant, the 8088, was chosen for the original IBM PC, setting the course of the desktop industry.
lint
Stephen C. Johnson's 1978 Bell Labs command that examines C source programs for bugs, type errors, and non-portable constructs the compiler lets pass. It split static checking out of the compiler and became the ancestor of every later linter.
Computer Modern
The default typeface family of TeX, designed by Donald Knuth in METAFONT as a parameterized family of about 500 letters and symbols, giving TeX documents their characteristic look.
METAFONT
Knuth's companion system to TeX for designing typefaces programmatically, describing each letter as a parametric outline drawn by a mathematically defined pen rather than as a fixed bitmap.
Oracle Database
Oracle's relational database management system, whose first shipping version (Oracle V2, 1979) was among the first commercially available SQL relational databases, and which became a dominant enterprise RDBMS.
WordStar
WordStar, from MicroPro, was the dominant word processor on CP/M and early MS-DOS microcomputers. Its diamond of Ctrl-key cursor commands became a widely imitated text-editing convention.
ed
ed is the original Unix line editor, written by Ken Thompson and described in the manual as 'the standard text editor'; it is the root of the ed-to-ex-to-vi lineage and of the regular expressions in sed and grep.
The Bourne Shell (sh)
The Bourne shell, written by Stephen Bourne at Bell Labs and released with Version 7 Unix in 1979, was the original Unix command-programming language. Its syntax became the model for the POSIX shell, Bash, and most later sh-compatible shells.
VisiCalc
VisiCalc (1979) was the first electronic spreadsheet program for personal computers. Created by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, it became the killer app that drove businesses to buy the Apple II.
Atari 8-bit Computers
The Atari 8-bit family (400/800, 1979), home computers built around custom ANTIC, GTIA, and POKEY chips that gave them advanced graphics and sound for their era.
dBASE
dBASE, sold by Ashton-Tate from 1980, was the dominant database management system for microcomputers. Its programming language became the basis of the long-lived xBase family.
TI-99/4A
The TI-99/4A (Texas Instruments, 1981), a home computer built on a 16-bit processor that fought a fierce price war with Commodore before Texas Instruments left the market.
MS-DOS
Microsoft's operating system for the IBM PC (1981), built on 86-DOS / QDOS, which Microsoft first licensed and then bought outright.
The IBM Personal Computer (Model 5150)
IBM's 1981 Model 5150 personal computer, built from off-the-shelf parts with a fully documented open architecture and an Intel 8088 processor; it became the dominant personal computer standard.
BBC Micro
The BBC Micro (Acorn, 1981), the computer built for the BBC Computer Literacy Project that became standard in British schools and whose maker, Acorn, later created the ARM processor.
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 (1982), the best-selling single computer model in history, whose SID sound chip and VIC-II sprite graphics made it a fixture of home computing, games, and the demoscene.
RCS (Revision Control System)
The Revision Control System, written by Walter Tichy in the early 1980s, was a widely used successor to SCCS that simplified per-file version control and stored history as deltas.
WEB and CWEB
Knuth's literate-programming tools, which take one combined source file and produce both typeset documentation (via weave) and compilable program source (via tangle); WEB targets Pascal and CWEB targets C, C++, and Java.
Sinclair ZX Spectrum
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1982), the inexpensive British home computer whose low price and color graphics drove a generation of UK programmers and the early British games industry.
gprof
gprof is the Unix call-graph execution profiler introduced at Berkeley in 1982, which combines instrumented call counting with statistical PC sampling to attribute a program's running time across its call graph.
GNU
The free Unix-compatible operating system started by the GNU Project in 1983; its name is a recursive acronym for 'GNU's Not Unix.'
IBM Db2
IBM's commercial relational database, launched in 1983, that grew directly out of the System R research project and became a mainstay of enterprise and mainframe data.
Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3 (1983) was the spreadsheet that made the IBM PC a business standard. It integrated a recalculating spreadsheet with business graphics and simple database operations in one fast program.
Apple Lisa
Apple's first computer with a graphical user interface, mouse, windows, and icons. Introduced in 1983, it was a commercial failure but pioneered the desktop metaphor that the Macintosh would carry to the mass market.
Turbo Pascal
Borland's fast, cheap, all-in-one Pascal compiler and editor for CP/M and DOS, launched in November 1983, which put professional development tools on hobbyist machines.
LaTeX
Leslie Lamport's document-preparation system, a macro package built on top of TeX that lets authors describe the logical structure of a document and leave the visual formatting to the system.
Apple Macintosh
The 1984 Apple computer that brought the mouse-driven graphical desktop to the mass market. Its system software, documented in Inside Macintosh, was built on Bill Atkinson's QuickDraw graphics package.
Emacs
The extensible, Lisp-programmable text editor; GNU Emacs, first made usable by Richard Stallman in 1985, is the canonical free version.
NTP (Network Time Protocol)
The protocol that synchronizes computer clocks over the Internet to within milliseconds using a hierarchy of time servers, started by David Mills in the 1980s and still in use today.
The WELL
The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, founded in 1985 by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant, an influential early virtual community whose real-name, conversation-first norms shaped online discourse.
The Apple LaserWriter
Apple's 1985 PostScript laser printer that, paired with the Macintosh and PageMaker, launched the desktop publishing revolution.
GEM (Graphical Environment Manager)
Digital Research's graphical user interface for DOS PCs and the Atari ST, released in 1985. An Apple lawsuit forced changes that crippled the PC version, while the Atari ST kept GEM as its native desktop.
Atari ST
Jack Tramiel's Atari line of 68000-based home computers, introduced in 1985 with a GEM graphical interface and built-in MIDI ports that made the machine a favorite in music production.
Commodore Amiga
Commodore's 1985 home computer whose custom chipset and preemptive-multitasking operating system made it a graphics, video, and music powerhouse, and the favored platform of the early demoscene.
GDB, the GNU Debugger
GDB is the GNU Project's source-level debugger for C, C++, and many other languages, providing breakpoints, watchpoints, stack inspection, and remote debugging across dozens of architectures.
GNU Screen
GNU Screen is a terminal multiplexer: a program that runs several full-screen terminal sessions inside a single physical terminal, and that can detach from a terminal and continue running so the session can be reattached later from elsewhere.
Sybase SQL Server
An early client-server relational database whose code Microsoft licensed to create its own SQL Server; later renamed Adaptive Server Enterprise and acquired by SAP.
GCC: The GNU Compiler Collection
Richard Stallman's free compiler, first released in 1987, which gave the free software movement and later Linux a high-quality compiler that anyone could use, study, and modify.
HyperCard
Apple's stack-and-card hypermedia authoring tool, created by Bill Atkinson and released in 1987, which let non-programmers build interactive applications; a conceptual ancestor of the web and modern app builders.
Interface Builder
The NeXT and later Apple visual UI design tool that pioneered drag-and-drop GUI construction, letting developers lay out interfaces and wire object connections graphically into nib (later xib) files instead of writing code.
RenderMan
Pixar's photorealistic rendering software and the accompanying RenderMan Interface Specification, an open scene-description standard introduced in 1988 and built initially on the Reyes architecture.
Ghostscript
L. Peter Deutsch's free interpreter for PostScript and later PDF, letting any computer render and convert documents in Adobe's page-description formats.
GNU Readline
GNU Readline, the library that gives command-line programs in-place line editing and command history. Its Emacs and vi keybindings are what make typing at the bash prompt and countless REPLs feel uniform.
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft's relational database management system, first shipped in 1989 as an OS/2 product derived from Sybase code, and later a mainstay of Windows enterprise environments.
Bash (Bourne-Again SHell)
Bash is the GNU Project's command-language interpreter, first released by Brian Fox in 1989 as a free-software replacement for the Bourne shell. It became the default interactive and scripting shell on most Linux systems and a conformant implementation of the POSIX shell.