Well that might be a big title for this post, but I was talking with some folks over the weekend about software you’ve used or software that has really influenced your life. I think many people say Google Earth has changed how they view data, but for me it really wasn’t that impressive since Google Earth is more of a validation of what we’ve done over the years than a life changer. So they pushed, what has changed your life if Google Earth isn’t it. I needed to think about it somewhat so you can consider this my reply to that question (in order of importance).
Apple HyperCard – I really wasn’t into programming when I was younger. I spent most of my time away from computers and out playing sports. That is until I found HyperCard. OK, HyperCard is more scripting than pure programming, but it got me interested. From there I moved into Pascal and down the line into VB/C++ and .NET. Actually if you think about HyperCard, it is sort of like how the world wide web became. Hyperlinks take you to new cards, scripts run in the background. Way before its time.
ArcInfo – Wow, you’d think it would be #1, but without HyperCard, I’m not sure I’d be where I am today. That said, I still remember the day I first saw someone create a map in ArcInfo and how quickly they were able to make changes vs my “traditional” methods. I love it all, from ArcEdit (no so much ArcPlot) to GRID and TIN. I’m sure I’d be a city planner right now (not that there is anything wrong with that) and not a GIS developer if I had not seen ArcInfo.
BBEdit – I graduated college really before web development took off (I was more of a Gopher/Veronica user), but once it did I quickly discovered BBEdit. I’m still a registered user even though I currently don’t have a Mac in my position. When that 17″ MacBook Pro shows up, BBEdit will be the first program loaded up. We all have our favorite text editors and this is mine
Aldus/Macromedia Freehand – Before ArcInfo, I used to use Freehand for my cartography. I never was very into pen and paper cartography and I was much better as smudging my work than making it look good. With Freehand I could scan in maps and digitize, work to scale and pretty much everything I do these days with ArcMap (well of course there was no database on the back end). I stopped using Freehand around 1998 when the company I was working for forced us to start using Illustrator. I still use Adobe Illustrator to this day, but it was Freehand that got me thinking about digital mapping.
ArcView 3.x – I’m not sure GIS would have the penetration it has today if ArcView 3.x didn’t come along with Avenue. ArcView was installed anywhere and everywhere. It was used as an Internet Map Server, replacement for ArcInfo and just about everything in between. A good Avenue programmer could make ArcView 3.x do things that used to take programmers that cost 10 times as much to accomplish. Of course you have to wonder given its large install base, how many copies were actually purchased. Missed revenue perhaps? Maybe not considering how locked into ESRI software many companies and organizations are these days. Might not have happened without ArcView 3.x. Our company spent many years developing customized ArcView projects and extensions. It was a very good business to be in back then.
What about other important software? Well programs like WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase and others did affect me, but I’m not sure they were as “life changing” as the ones listed above. I’m sure I’m missing one or two that are just as important as those I’ve listed (I did spend a year of my life playing MacBolo in college).
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Hypercard would be on the top of my list as well. In the 4th grade, I had a great teacher that let me co-teach a summer class in hypercard. Definitely changed my life.
And there was another application when I was really young. Was it called turtle writer?
You mean Logo. I assume
It was ArcGIS 8 for me. I had just started grad school when 8 was released. My GIS experience as an undergrad in a very poorly funded Geography department at a small school was limited to making some maps from Census data in ArcView 3.x. No avenue programming, and no workstation.
Luckily, at grad school there was a professor who jumped on the 8.x customization with VBA and VB and it got me hooked. I had never even considered programming before, and I wish I had. It has been a painful process at times since I’m almost exclusively self-taught, but it has been worth it. Learning ArcMap customization led me to IMS as well, and that is what I primarily work with now.
Had programming not clicked with me, I have no idea what I’d be doing in GIS (probably a planner too
).
Some people love HyperCard so much, they can’t let it go: http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/.
Life changing? For me, believe it or not, it was perl.
No doubt about it: For me it was the release of the .NET framework. I quickly started doing some really cool stuff soon after the first beta was released (thanks goes to one of my good friends for knocking me into it). I guess I wouldn’t have been so dedicated to software development if it wasn’t for this (great) framework. And using .NET for GIS applications is almost too easy
My first program in Apple Basic–
10 HOME 20 PRINT “I AM THE KING OF THE WORLD” 30 GOTO 20
Cue immense amusement at result.
Um, then I didn’t touch another PC for 7 years.
BT
@Brian
Didn’t you comment your code back then?
Definitely BBEdit. It was the first editor that let me understand the concept of regular expressions. I got so addicted to it that to this date I still refuse to use editors that don’t include some degree of regex search. At my previous job we saved thousands of dollars in labor thanks to the clever use of BBEdit text filters written in Perl and PHP.
I can see how folks might say Google Earth these days. Having worked in a GIS environment for 9 years +/-, I don’t see it. I’m much more influenced by ArcView 3.x, and ArcInfo.
Early influences were QBASIC which (during grad school) gave me the ability to convert output from Wildlife Home Range Programs (KERNELHR) and Triangulation Programs (OTA & TRIANG) into input for programs like SAS and SPLUS.
That led to an interest in Basic which I eventually put to use with ArcObjects and VB6 which has been fun !
3 pieces of software for me:
Jetpac; a game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K. This was the first ever software I owned at age 10 (I got it for my birthday). Without this game, I’d have never got into computers.
GEM Paint for the Amstrad PC1512. First graphics program I ever dabbled in. I spent hours playing around on this. It’s what got me into graphics.
Finally, Netscape 1.0. This was release about the time I got onto the web back in 1994. It changed my life and inspired me to become a web designer.
For me, it was:
BASIC on my Commodore 64 (1978) – A 10-year-old writes his first program to generate D&D characters and a programmer is born.
MS Word on the Mac (~1989) – All of the WordPerfect machines were taken in the lab and my term paper was due. Hmmm, so my interface didn’t have to be a black screen and a blinking cursor…
NSCA Mosaic – Like James, I graduated just before the advent of the web. Two words on this one: “view source.”
MapInfo – I use mostly ESRI now, but this is what got me into GIS.
Borland JBuilder – I also graduated before the explosion of OOP. I work mostly in .NET now but this helped me get the concept while meeting the deadline I had been given. The manager had decided we would use “that Java stuff I keep reading about.”
Probably VB3, C, Ruby, BBEdit, VMWare.
Got to be Microsoft Access 97 for me. I was a fairly lowly field archaeologist at the time and had no interest in computers at all, but I got involved in creating a database for a big archaeological site I was working on. I got really interested in the relationships between things and how a complicated site could be represented quite simply and elegantly using a set of well-defined rules.
When they let me loose with ArcView 3.2 a few months later, there was no stopping me. My main focus now is Postgres/Postgis but it has to be those two programmes that changed my career if not my life.
Assembly language. Without a doubt #1. I built a bunch of hardware to control Skinner boxes, and wrote a general purpose operant-conditioning scripting language using PDP-11 assembly language back in 1976. There’s not much you can do to develop a better foundation in computers than twiddle the bits and watch things happen.
UNIX – AT&T version 6. I learned this by setting up a computer system for the Cognitive Science Center at MIT in 1981. The whole OS + source code came on two 9-track mag tapes.
C – Part of the same experience. I spent the next 16 or so years using C as my main language. There’s nothing you can’t do in C.
Tcl – My first scripting language. Coupled with C. The realization that you can build a bunch of C code and string it together with a scripting language? Pure joy. Probably also the most unmaintainable combination there is! I guess swig is the general-purpose way to do that these days.
sed/awk/grep – pre Perl, these were the bee’s knees. I never learned Perl because these gems are still around, and getting better. The key common denominator: Regular Expressions. Perhaps one of the more powerful and underappreciated concepts around.
Emacs – forget vi, vim, and all those other wimpy editors! When you have Emacs, you can rule the world. At least until your head fills up with meta-commands and your brain explodes.
There are only two life-changing apps on my list.
HyperCard. I had started programming on an Apple II in grade school, then got bored and walked away for years. Then I took a multimedia class in college and the professor showed us HyperCard driving a laserdisc player. By the end of the day, I was in the computer lab authoring stacks. For a few years, I did everything with that application.
NSCA Mosaic. Thanks Bill Dollins for mentioning it. I had originally thought there was only one application that changed my life, but in retrospect I had that same experience around the same time you did. View Source was a challenge, a temptation. How could I resist?
Over the years, I’ve used many useful, powerful, and engaging applications, but only those two captured my imagination and inspired me to think in new ways.
In semi-Chronological order:
1: Gulliver’s Travels [Atari Syntax] 2: Logo [Mac] 3: Zork [c64] 4: Seven Cities of Gold [c128] 5: Corel 3 [pc] 6: HotDog HTML editor [pc] 7: 3D Studio [pc] 8: ArcView 3.x [pc] 9: GE? ArcGIS 8?9? Sketchup? PhP?
As opposed to apps, I think it was some simple but exciting games that added to my fascination with space/time and computers. Although, even more fundamentally, I’d say BBS, Mirc, and Ws_FTP allowed everything else to happen.
1) vb4 and Access95 2) ArcView 3.x 3) MapObjects 4) Myst 5) Netscape 1.0
In order or time and impact! 1. TI-99 Basic (1981?) 2. Prodigy 3. ProComm (Free download from BBS) 4. AutoCAD 12 5. Office 4.3 with Access 6. Microsoft.Net Framework 1.1
Makes me realize how much time I have spent in front of these flashing screens!
AutoCAD… and a book called “AutoLISP in Plain English: A Practical Guide for Non-Progammers” was my first real taste of software programming. I learned, back in 1999, that my job was to get AutoCAD to do what it didn’t want (or was not designed) to do.
AutoCAD… and a book called “AutoLISP in Plain English: A Practical Guide for Non-Progammers” was my first real taste of software programming. I learned, back in 1989, that my job was to get AutoCAD to do what it didn’t want (or was not designed) to do.
2a.Eudora OMG!! A graphical interface for email rather than doing it all on Telnet terminals WOW. 2b.Mosiac Graphics, hyperlinks and HTML rather that text based bulletin boards and all that other arcane pre-web stuff. How many weeks of my life did I waste just getting lost in the web and following links to stuff I would have never directly found?
4.MS Works (~1988) My handwriting was so bad that after I turned in my first paper done on a word processor, my middle school teachers asked me to do all my papers on it. Handwriting anything other than notes seems like some ancient task that I once did but couldn’t imagine doing anymore. This also made me like spreadsheets and understand databases. I know Lotus 123 was better but it seemed a lot less accessible to me back then. I got my first paid job that summer designing a custom inventory & billing mgmt system for a soft drink / candy vending machine operator using hand coded macros in MS Works. And I can make Excel stand on it’s head and do your laundry from intensive use and customization of it or its predecessor and doing spreadsheet automation since I was 13.
Work: Basic on my Vic20 Logo on my Apple ][ PINE Visual C++ 6.0
Play: Robotron 2084 Dark Castle Populous Sim city (the original) Wing commander Marathon Halo 2 World of Warcraft
In thinking about this more I have to add google search. I still remember the days of lycos/dogpile/alta vista and sorting through pages upon pages of search results trying to find that one gem. It was a glorious day when someone – I think Dvorak – mentioned there was some sort of small startup in the search space from some Stanford Grad students. My wife and I would gape in amazement at how well the “I’m feeling lucky” button would work. I really feel like it transformed the web into a much more useful place for information retrieval.
Wow, some of these programs mentioned makes me want to push my Turbo button or to log on to #singlegisers on dalnet..anyways, here’s my 2 cents.
ArcINFO I’d have to say that ArcINFO 7.whatever helped me understand how scripts and code worked (.aml). Then I learned to adjust scripts (.ave’s and .avx’s) in ArcView 3 for my evil deeds and then ultimately to dissect corrupted .apr files.
UNIX Knowing UNIX or Linux commands (as well as any command line program) impresses your bosses, sometimes undergrads and justifies your your paygrade..
Flash Just the output from this program is really fun. I spent an entire summer just making goofy 15M cartoons in 1999. I’ve never restarted my computer so many times!
Google Earth Fusion and Server. This app is currently challenging me on so many different levels in that I’m trying to automate my workflows for land research while at the same time trying to build nice presentation output for land salespeople.
Being witness to the changing relationship of people and software on these machines can get sentimental and surprisingly personal. These days I try to make sense of the bookends:
A. TRS-80 BASIC and Assembly started it all at home on that “fancy new high resolution” 160×90 addressable display to create bar and pie charts. When I could “go to market” with a program beyond what my parents did with their TRS-80s at work (statistics and writing), well that was cool for the teen ego.
B. Google Earth is the other bookend, when now I visit my going-on-80 folks and they boast about the cool 3D maps they created recently … and it is more fun than what I did with GIS at work!
Come full circle with a smile. Isn’t that what really changes life?
Wonder what software my progeny will smile about in 2040.
MacWrite: changed what I had thought of word processor permanently. I was only a high school student that time, so word processing was the single most important application in my computer (Mac 512)
Solo/Powerpoint: Solo is an application that none of you may have ever heard of, but it is a Powerpoint-like software that was designed by ex-management consultants, so it was incredibly easy to use for any consulting-like presentation. It is long outdated by Powerpoint but Powerpoint still dominates what I do everday.
It was probably that old FidoNet mailer programm “Trapdoor” on the Commodore Amiga.
Qbasic – Changing “Gorillas” so that one throw of the banana destroyed the whole city, began my love affair of programming in grade 6 so I could enjoy..
Turing – or at least, getting into it. Highschool Grade 11, the syntax seemed perfect, which confused me when I finally started programming in..
C, which launched me then on into OOP and a variety of languages.
ArcInfo .. 9. Call me young, I’ve been working in GIS for two years, and only got the job because of limited experience, and the face that I’m a systems engineering student, and they wanted someone with technical background, to “figure out this new software we bought”. Luckily we goto U of Guelph and our environmental engineers take GIS, so some extra lab time and I was prepared for the world.
ICQ – You’re from England? what time is it there? … haha, cool.
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