What’s the Greatest Software Ever Written?
If you ask me, I think it’s impossible to declare one piece of software as king over all others…but heck, that’s how it goes with everything in life. Everybody’s got their bets on what/who gets to be on top. But saying “heck, that’s how it goes with everything in life” is the easy way out, too.
Fortunately, Charles Babcock of InformationWeek unflinchingly barrels through the slew of great software made through the decades and arrives at a tough decision. Among the heavyweights he considered were Java, Google’s page-ranking search application, the Morris worm, and the first Apple Mac OS.
In the end, Babcock arrived at one champion, which is…
Unix. More specifically, BSD 4.3.
In Babcock’s words:
The single Greatest Piece of Software Ever, with the broadest impact on the world, was BSD 4.3. Other Unixes were bigger commercial successes. But as the cumulative accomplishment of the BSD systems, 4.3 represented an unmatched peak of innovation. BSD 4.3 represents the single biggest theoretical undergirder of the Internet. Moreover, the passion that surrounds Linux and open source code is a direct offshoot of the ideas that created BSD: a love for the power of computing and a belief that it should be a freely available extension of man’s intellectual powers — a force that changes his place in the universe.
Babcock places IBM’s System R, the root architecture of relational database, as the second greatest piece. This is followed by the gene-sequencing software at the Institute for Genomic Research. Rounding out his top twelve:
4. IBM System 360 operating system
5. Java programming language
6. Mosaic browser
7. Sabre system
8. Apple Macintosh operating system
9. MS Excel spreadsheet
10. Apollo spacecraft guidance system
11. Google page-ranking search application
12. Morris worm
You might be surprised by some his choices, esp. the last one, the infamous “Great Worm”. You can read Babcock’s defense of his choices, along with a few other candidates, in his article. Aside from these software powerhouses, Babcock’s pick for “the greatest software that never got written” — the 1944 Colossus — is quite interesting.
Love him or hate him for his choices, it doesn’t matter in my book. Probably because I just love geeky lists and top-tens like this.
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September 1st, 2006 at 2:06 am
The Open Source community’s enthusiasm is a wonderful thing. (Get Firefox now! Oomph!)
I’ve seen this list almost a month ago but never bothered to read it fully. Glad to hear that Java’s in there because it’s so… so… big… I spent my whole college with it—StringTokenizer being the most awesome and most useful class ever and now it’s deprecated!—and yet I haven’t used it fully.
Anyway~!
Excel? Why-oh-why don’t I ever use Excel?
PageRank? Is that the encompassing algorithm for Google search and rank? Because if it isn’t, they should’ve put the whole of Google instead!
As for the others, well, they’re great too. I think I’d like to read arguments and comparisons regarding these choices though.
September 1st, 2006 at 2:52 am
Java? Whoo-hoo! Although I often quip that I don’t wanna be a Java moron forever, I’m still… I dunno. Happy doesn’t exactly describe it but it approximates what I feel good enough.
MS Excel? Yea, very lovely. Its functions sure saved my fingers a a lot of precious calories when people “request” me to encode some stuff or some other.
PageRank? I’m not sure. I mean, it just ranks pages by the number of other pages linking to it. It was easily exploited by the porn industry, making the actual material hard to find, not that I actively search for it anyway ^_^ It was also exploited by the music industry, making mp3’s difficult to find in a sea of links linking each other.
Still, another exploit, although a bit more comical (or atrocious, depending on how you see it), is called Google bombing. Try searching for the terms below and click “I’m feeling lucky” or “Sinuswerte ako”
[French Military Victories] [Arabian Gulf]
[Pekeng Pangulo] [Miserable Failure]
[Click here] [Salamangkero]
Sorry, just couldn’t resist adding that last part :p Probably the thing I like most about PageRank ^_^
September 1st, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Ia, yeah, Java, good ol’ Java…I feel like I’m missing it, but ironically, right now I don’t want to do any more programming, heh.
Mavi, on PageRank, I’m quite biased for its inclusion, as my current job (and my ’sideline’ as a problogger) heavily involves search engine optimization. (Check out our Isulong SEOPH SEO contest entry, too!)
Ah, the ever laudable/insidious Google-bombing…of the six search phrases you listed, I managed to guess right the top results for three, hehe. Congrats on being number one for Salamangkero!
September 1st, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Me? Currently it’s Flock Web Browser, probably next week it wil change
September 1st, 2006 at 6:51 pm
I agree with Mavi!
I think it’s more like a fuzzy feeling ’cause it’s close to home. It’s the thing I’m most familiar with (I think), even if we were all born as programmers in C.
Google bombing: type in “sinungaling” and see the top result (or choose “I’m feeling lucky”)! I still think Google’s methods are debatable. Is it still fair? Was it fair in the first place, or just a popularity contest? That was how I saw Google when it came out Oops, someone might shoot me for saying that.
Flock? In that case others will say P2P and Bittorent software! ^_^ Photoshop is still more genius than evAr. =P
September 2nd, 2006 at 12:23 am
Waitaminute! I don’t see OS X anywhere there! Of course, OS X Tiger should have its own item, too.
September 6th, 2006 at 2:18 am
Jason, that’s actually a good mantra to follow — one program at a time, baby, one program at a time
Btw, first impressions on Flock (just DL’ed it): Flock rocks.
Ia, when will I have the patience to finally (decently) learn Photoshop? Hehe.
Jangelo, yeah, I guess…though of course, it’s just one man’s opinion, namely Babcock’s. Congrats on the new Mac!
September 6th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
im surprised at MS Excel. I always thought it was great, it never occurred to me it was that great.
im also surprised that there arent any php-mysql apps. in particular, i’m thinking of Wordpress. WP isn’t a great feat in itself but is certainly highly influential, in that it helped the blogging world get on its feet as fast as it did.
September 12th, 2006 at 12:23 am
[...] Well, if you’ve dropped by my tech blog in recent days, you’d have read this article on Charles Babcock’s choices for the greatest software ever written. Babcock of InformationWeek ranks Google’s page-ranking search application as 11th overall. This is the same search application on which the Isulong SEOPH contest is based and revolves upon. Truly, Google has changed the landscape of the World Wide Web with it. [...]
October 3rd, 2006 at 5:03 am
Hello World!
October 29th, 2006 at 1:44 am
Gary, I was also surprised with Excel. Maybe as the years go by, PHP-SQL apps/WP might turn more heads around and thus merit a place among the ‘greats’.
Fleeb, I’m hoping to see your revamped site soon! Good luck