
Ask HN: What's the oldest software you still use today? - onuralp
Inspired by the thread on ever-lasting software.
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esmi
Maybe tar? First version is from 1979.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(computing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_\(computing\))

Although mine was written in 2010.

    
    
      % tar --version
      bsdtar 2.8.3 - libarchive 2.8.3
    

Edit: Actually it's probably telnet which I use to get into lab equipment.
First version is from 1973. The version I run was written in 1993.

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vivalibre
Oldest as in oldest origin or oldest release?

Irfanview comes to mind as the default image viewer for Windows

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nickelcitymario
Deoxyribonucleic acid

~~~
gumby
It's a shame the source has been lost so everybody has to modify the object
code in situ. An utter revision control disaster!

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erulabs
Or, potentially, the best version control system ever? Automatically
forgetting dead code is a pretty sweet feature :P

~~~
gumby
Sadly there's tons of dead code just lying around in the chromosomes just
waiting to be activated.

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DerekRobot
I'm guessing that some of the included BSD tools on my Mac are pretty old,
because they're so simple.
[https://gist.github.com/pete/665971](https://gist.github.com/pete/665971)

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egypturnash
Does using a recent version of something that's been updated for a while
count? Adobe Illustrator's first release was March 1987, making it 32 years
old this month; I use it pretty much daily. I'm currently using last year's
version.

If not then I think it's Neko.
[http://splook.com/Software/Neko.html](http://splook.com/Software/Neko.html)

Lately my Mac has been warning me that Neko will stop working soon once Apple
drops support for 32-bit apps and that will be a sad day indeed.

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cheeko1234
VLC for sure.

>The VideoLan software originated as an academic project in 1996

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I_complete_me
Warning: nerd at work. The question may be ambiguous. To highlight: compare
"what's the oldest software you still use today" to "what's the oldest
software you use today". The first one refers to software you have been using
over a longish(?) period and the second to software that may be old that you
are using even though you may have only begun using it. I hope my pedantry
(pedanticism?) isn't too inane...

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stcredzero
_I hope my pedantry (pedanticism?) isn 't too inane..._

Or, you surreptitiously hope it's much too inane, much as people do with puns.
What should we call those who secretly love pedantry? "Pedantophiles?" Oh what
a difference one syllable makes!

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beatgammit
I think that would be someone who secretly loves pedants, which isn't quite
the same thing as secretly loving pedantry.

Am I doing this right?

~~~
stcredzero
I don't know. I got downvoted, so apparently I'm doing it right!

~~~
I_complete_me
Actually, I like your sense of humour.

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cimmanom
Command line: basic Unix utilities (cd, anyone?)

GUI, used regularly: BBEdit, 1992

GUI, used infrequently: MS Word, 1983

GUI, not updated in forever: abandonware games played in DosBox

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rekabis
I have been using the same web browser, in terms of codebase, ideology and
heritage, for over a quarter century now.

NCSA Mosaic -> Netscape 2, 3, 4/4.78, 6 -> Firebird -> Firefox -> Waterfox.

I have run other web browsers such as Opera and Vivaldi, but my main browser
has always been and will always be a Mozilla product.

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digital_voodoo
Winamp 5.6, on all my Windows PCs. It's my most missed software on my Mac. I'd
even install it in my car if I could...

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nickelcitymario
Why 5.6, specifically? What was it about that version?

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zrobotics
That's the last official release, 5.7 & 5.8 are leaked betas.

~~~
nickelcitymario
Well, that makes perfect sense.

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jbarberu
Assuming we count recent versions of old-school software mine are:

foobar2000 vim (I was still being breastfed when Bram started)

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clort
I still use xv by John Bradley regularly.. the most recent version 3.10a was
released on 29/12/1994 !

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xv_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xv_\(software\))

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facorreia
Probably vim.

~~~
beatgammit
I use vi on occasion when I'm in a new BSD box and haven't installed vim yet,
so there's that.

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Foober223
GNU grep. If you cheat and count years since the original grep it's pretty
old.

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yesenadam
Not sure if that's cheating - most of the suggestions on this page go from the
original version of something. A kind of 'Ship of Theseus' problem - there's
no natural or obvious definition of 'what counts as still the same thing'
(except 'all parts exactly the same', I guess).

Wikipedia says grep is from 1974.

Cat, chmod, chown, comp, cp, date, df, du, ed, find, ln, ls, mailx, mkdir, mv,
nm, od, pr, rm, rmdir, sort, strip, tty, unlink, wc, who, and write are from
Version 1 Unix - Nov 1971!

The page for ed says: "It was one of the first parts of the Unix operating
system that was developed, in August 1969."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unix_commands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unix_commands)

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kareiva
My father, a chemistry professor, still uses PegasusMail which has been around
since approx the year 1990. He is also good at handling his mail through
`pine` program over a terminal.

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stcredzero
On the gaming side: Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters. I'll still play
Battlezone once in awhile, which goes back to 1980.

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ashleyn
Oldest still supported? Probably gotta be GCC.

Oldest unsupported? I have some VB6 tools I use to make tilesets for Sega
Genesis homebrews.

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Udik
PaintShop Pro 7, about 18 years old.

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juangacovas
Paint Shop Pro 5 and 9 here

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vmh1928
PSP 5 here. Build date of March 30, 1998.

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boznz
winamp 2.7 from 2001 for my mp3s. Still works fine on windows 10

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iforgotpassword
Nah, need 5 for Unicode support. :) using the classic skin it's pretty much
the same.

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iron0013
Cool Edit Pro (Adobe Audition has never been nearly as good)

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billfruit
ed, emacs.

~~~
beatgammit
Do you actually use Ed, or the series of other programs that are based on it,
like vi(m) and sed?

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billfruit
I occasionally try to use ed as a distraction free editor.

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whateveracct
Emacs and GHC

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reallydude
ls for showing files.

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hyperman1
Xixit!

If only for the music tracks.

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detuur
GNU coreutils.

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supercanuck
SAP

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altsyset
WordPress?

