
Ask HN: What’s the most important software in the world? - reducesuffering
Currently and in the future
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GiorgioG
The one running my son’s insulin pump.

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sebst
You're making the point here. It's the software that makes our lives
significantly better, which is the most important one.

However, as software is everywhere, the original question is the same thing as
"what physical invention" is the most important one?

From one standpoint this could be something like the wheel or electrical
light, i.e. Bios, compiler or a network stack in the software world. Or,
something way more personal, like health care related software for the loved
ones or some more profane stuff.

To make the question even less tangible, software in general can be replaced
more easily than physical things, most of the time.

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srirangr
The most important software I've seen is Excel. Almost every new application I
see is trying to replace excel in some domain or the other.

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thiago_fm
+1. And I think most of the software that try to replace it somehow fails.

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heyjudy
The Perl on nuclear warheads that aren't exploding.

[http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol2_1/tpj0201-0004.html](http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol2_1/tpj0201-0004.html)

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gtvwill
*nix based operating systems.

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AxisOfEval
Leaving highly classified and for whom kinda questions aside, I must say it's
the software that the good guys SWIFT ([http://swift.com](http://swift.com))
use to run the global financial network.

The SWIFT Network has no real alternatives and entire countries teeter towards
bankruptcies when they're banned from using it.

The last time the US banned Iran, Iran reportedly lost $100M; everyday!

[Edit] Spellings and URL

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jangid
Probably that is why big economies are after crypto networks. Ripple is a
close alternative for the SWIFT network.

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tomjen3
The TCP/IP stack in the BSD everybody copied from around the time win 95 was
being developed.

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uberman
Whatever "Operations Plan 8044" is supported by / implemented in:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_United_States#Command_and_control)

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rolph
highly classified stuff, but in its day likely a FORTRAN implementation, the
OPLAN is not simply a computer program but is a heuristic of human operations
that is modified depending on current intelligence briefs, and asset
deployment and distribution. The ARPANET [DARPANET] was a major part of this.

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kristianp
The relational database.

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rolph
in my opinion the most important software is actually firmware, that means the
BIOS

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

the successor UEFI im not so happy about but it can be tamed, it seems to be a
binary blob thin edge of wedged between the firmware and the OS.

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

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scarface74
I’m not by any means an Android fan, but I have to admit that AOSP has done
more to make computing accessible to almost everyone in the world than any
other platform.

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sloaken
I had a teach who once was reviewing the history of computing. She explained
how time sharing was invented in the 1960s. The ability for a computer to do
more than one thing at a time, was a HUGE improvement.

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Adamantcheese
Any network protocol implementation.

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quickthrower2
I’d go for software running power stations. Without power we’re fucked.

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malux85
The Linux kernel

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type0
For whom?

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probinso
In the future ,General task automation and artificial common sense

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lexda15
Online Banking

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cimmanom
Whatever sewage is running electronic voting machines and vote tabulators.

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AnimalMuppet
Web servers.

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JunaidBhai
Bios

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notomorrow
GIT

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clanrebornsx
Facebook and gmail and Google search are the most important softwares.

