Ask HN: Whats the coolest software you've ever seen or used? - meesterdude
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krembo
Definitely MS Excel.

Proof: The enormous number of variations that people are using it except from
its original usecase of a calculating spreadsheet

~~~
meesterdude
I'm not sure how much credit MS deserves (genuinely) but it's absolutely up
there for me as well, when you consider the impact it's had on business.

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atmosx
Harry's Lap Timer[1]. It's amazing what this program can do, exploiting nearly
100% of the iPhone hardware. I remember that the battery wasn't even charging
while I was racing. It was connected to the USB car docker, but it was steady
at 75%.

[1] [http://www.gps-laptimer.de](http://www.gps-laptimer.de)

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LarryMade2
FoxBase +/Mac 2.x - it was one of the dBase 3+ clones, this one was geared
directly on the Mac.

It got way more right than just the databse, well integrated quickdraw
libraries and could do graphic forms and such and given the way it was
designed you could graphically generate full printed pages as well, and get
help using the output from the form builder to help you work out the code.
Very fast, easy to program.

I think it all was all about 800K app, compiled from C.

Even the developers got turned on to the superior Mac version (I have
promotional material from the time somewhere talking about how everyone at fox
was getting Mac religion. You can get an idea from this article -
[http://www.foxprohistory.org/interview_fox_to_mac.htm](http://www.foxprohistory.org/interview_fox_to_mac.htm)
)

That changed once Microsoft took Fox software over, started standardizing the
FoxPro Line to windows standards (foxels... shudder)

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thorin
Amiga - Deluxe Paint 2 was incredible when I first saw it, especially the
concept of working with HAM although it wasn't so practical to use those
images. DP3 was an awesome intro to animation also. Photon paint was pretty
cool too, although I seem to remember waiting a long time for effects to
render.

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joe563323
google earth. Around 2005 or 2006 when i saw it for the first time i was blown
away.

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dpeck
The symbolic calculus capabilities of Maple still blow my mind.

~~~
scotty79
Symbolic calculations are great. I learned about them (I think in highschool)
with
[http://www.chartwellyorke.com/derive.html](http://www.chartwellyorke.com/derive.html)

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scotty79
SketchUp

You can sit down and do 3d without knowing anything about the program. Things
like Maya, Blender or 3ds Max require training to achieve almost anything.

Fireworks

I can only wonder how amazing it could be if it was split out from Macromedia
before it was bought by Adobe.

IntelliJ Idea

Type hints were amazing. For the first time I felt like having actual
conversation with the computer about what I want to achieve. Too bad it didn't
progress at all since then.

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hemling
I always had high respect for google maps.

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J-dawg
The original Elite on the BBC Micro. Coded in assembly by 2 people as a summer
project. Used procedural generation to create a universe of thousands of star
systems, all fitting into 32kb of memory. It's just incredible what they
achieved.

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kleer001
Houdini from SideEffects.

Saw it used in school in 1997. Left a job because they wouldn't get a license
of it for me in 2007 (after stringing me along for a year). Have been happily
using it at work since at different studios around the world.

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eecks
Besides from Excel and Maps which have been mentioned: Facebook because of how
it used javascript. Most message boards at the time had page
reloads/redirects/wait screens after posting.

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gatesphere
Leo ([http://leoeditor.com](http://leoeditor.com)) pretty much blew my mind
when I figured it out. Changed the way I see data.

(Full disclosure, I contribute to Leo now.)

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bliti
I'm constantly amazed by minecraft. Its a world within itself.

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joeclark77
The original Civilization game, pretty much blew my mind.

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galfarragem
I have always prefered Colonization game. The best turn-based game I know.

~~~
joeclark77
Yes!!! A thousand times yes.

They made a new version called Civilization IV: Colonization around 2008, but
it wasn't as good. The independence clock ran out too fast for you to really
get anything built before the endgame.

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Gustomaximus
Google Maps still impresses me in the ability to go look at almost anywhere in
the world. Likewise for Wikipedia if that counts as software.

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galfarragem
Sketchup is definitely cool. The most user-friendly (professional capable)
software I know.

Autocad is also great. An emacs for CAD.

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DrScump
Resolve (a Boole and Babbage product), on MVS mainframes. Incredibly powerful
for its time.

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patrickfl
probably ophtcrack or Kali Linux distro, always amazed when I see nice looking
front end software designed to exploit known vulnerabilities.

