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Ask HN: What's an old software that you would like to have again?
We're on HN there're many people that start to look for some ideas to start programming or building better skills. In my life I had many newbies that just wanted to "copy" software characteristics and then open source it.
Do you have any old software that you would like to have again? Let's fill some comments for those people that want to start a weekend project or just want to revive some nostalgia
- horsellama 2y agoCrimson: Steam Pirates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson:_Steam_Pirates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson:_Steam_Pirates
- visox 2y agoDo have some nostalgia towards ICQ, think it was great at finding people based on interest and geo-location. Dont think there is anything like that now, but i also think it cant be copied.
- DamonHD 2y agoWordStar (non-document mode). I stil remember way too many of the key sequences from ~1985!
- toast0 2y agoJoe is pretty WordStar like, and also includes jstar which I think is more or less a preset to be WordStarrier. I've been using it for most of my programming since ~ 1995.
- JojoFatsani 2y agoOffice 97
- al_borland 2y agoOld iTunes, pre-store, pre-video, etc. Just a music library and playlist management. I’ve actually been thinking about setting up an old G4 Mac just for this.
- tyrotoxism 2y agoThere's an existing app called Swinsian that is basically old iTunes as described.
- al_borland 2y agoThanks, I’ll give it a try.
- RetroTechie 2y agoWinDiff
- cpach 2y agoa) Knox – no good alternatives exist today https://www.macstories.net/reviews/agile-web-solutions-acquires-knox-great-file-encryption-app-for-mac-os-x/ https://www.macstories.net/reviews/agile-web-solutions-acqui... b) Evernote, before it jumped the shark.
- cookiengineer 2y agowoltlab burning board or phpbb: But in a memory safe and secure (read as: strongly typed and sanitized) language, with a better database query concept. The old forums were plagued by SQL injection or PHP parser corruption/overflow exploits. After reddit and stackoverflow both kinda are on their way to the shitter, I'd love to see e.g. an open source golang or rust based forum software flourish. Ideally supported by EFF or the Linux foundation. There is Apache Answers [1] which was very promising, but I'm not sure whether the focus was that this was just a one time incubator product or whether they plan on building it further. I fear that a lot of projects that were trying to tackle this niche were too overengineered. The reason why PHP forums were so popular is because it was easy (or convenient) to deploy. A simple VPS setup, even XAMPP or LAMPP tools existed, and all server administration web UIs like confixx had support for managing its dependencies. [1] https://github.com/apache/incubator-answer https://github.com/apache/incubator-answer
- vunderba 2y agoMicrosoft PDS (aka Quickbasic). QB64 is an okay substitute but since it's compiled rather than interpreted it loses a lot of the magic that made BASIC special back in the day.
- hnthrowaway0328 2y agoI think QuickBasic is a compiled language but QBasic is the interpreted one?
- vunderba 2y agoso QuickBasic (4.5, etc) give you the option to compile your source for purposes of distribution but while you are coding/testing/etc it's purely interpretive. QB is the free to use bundled version for MS-DOS that doesn't have this feature.
- hnthrowaway0328 2y agoAh thanks my memory failed me.
- mikewarot 2y agoPicassa, which Google killed.
- gadders 2y agoSeconded.
- neonnoodle 2y agoCorel Painter 6
- dakiol 2y agoWinamp (for macOS, for instance)
- yen223 2y ago2017 SketchUp
- runjake 2y agoEudora, an old email client.
- smarri 2y agoA birds eye view, turn based game, based on the Aliens film. I played it on apple Mac maybe 25+ years ago. Have never been able to find it since. It always ended with the famous quote from the film "it's game over man, game over".
- throwaway38375 2y agoThis one? https://www.macintoshrepository.org/64891-aliens https://www.macintoshrepository.org/64891-aliens
- smarri 2y agoWow. Yes. You've no idea how long that's been! Thank you throwaway38375, what a legend.
- smarri 2y agoI just checked, almost 30 years!!
- throwaway38375 2y agoHappy to help dude. Enjoy! :)
- admissionsguy 2y agoRescueTime before they removed most features. The old version still technically exists, but is unmaintained and broken. It's really the weirdest regression I have seen in consumer software.
- gadders 2y agoLotus Notes. Still beats Outlook for searching for emails and is easily better than the pile of refuse that is SharePoint for document libraries, workflows etc.
- dagw 2y agoI think Lotus Notes must be one of the most controversial pieces of software ever released. One of my first jobs was developing a document and project management workflow system using Lotus Notes 4 and Domino and found it not only quite quick and easy to use, but looking back I have to say Notes was way ahead of its time with a lot of what it offered. Yet every time I mention Notes among IT people, most of them who have used it respond with visceral hatred.
- gadders 2y agoI started my career as a Lotus Notes developer so have a soft spot for it, even v3. When I started with with Notes it was pre-internet as well so having a system in London and New York that could replicate only updates over a not-very high bandwidth link to the US was amazing. But I've recently had to create document storage and approval sites with a simple workflow and it's horrible in SharePoint.
- dagw 2y agoNotes was a bit weird in that it was actually a pretty great rapid application development environment and 'no-sql' (way before that term became trendy) document store that was sold as a mediocre email client.
- dagw 2y agoslrn. Although I think what I actually miss is old usenet and the community I had there.
- janpavlque 2y ago- an IM that doesn’t suck. All modern IMs (Facebook Messenger and such) are garbage compared to old-school desktop apps. - a music player that doesn’t suck. I wish I could use streaming services with Foobar2000.
- toast0 2y agoDigitally Imported will work just fine with Foobar, if you have a paid account. ;p (They've got some sister sites if you don't like electronic dance music)
- interbased 2y agoI really miss AIM and MSN Messenger. Also Xfire for integration with games.
- cookiengineer 2y agoTrillian and Pidgin, combined with Hamachi... Those were the golden days of pre-online but also online gaming.
- kleer001 2y agoDoes google reader count? The social aspect was delightful
- pavluha 2y agoWindows 7 was the best _windows_ based OS for me.
- mrKola 2y agoMacromedia Fireworks
- bindd 2y agoThere was an image-editor I used to use and it was a joy. IrfanView, I think, it was! I would like to have that back if I could!