I'm nearly 60 years old. I used emacs in school and I still use it every day today. Along with the unix shells and utility commands, I can't think of any other software I've consistenty used for all those years. They really did it right with that stuff.
Back in those days, csh was more popular as an interactive shell. sh was used more for scripting. At least that's what I recall. bash didn't exist yet.
It's really remarkable just how durable the unix command line, emacs, vi have been.
From monochrome terminals to the latest (Android at least) phones you can still pull up a terminal and edit like it's 1984. Even on Windows with Cygwin.
If you had to bet on a technology still being there 40 years from now it would surely be that.
Wow! I'm putting together a podcast about emacs and I'd love to talk to you about your experience for it. Please contact jerod@changelog.com if you're interested.
Back in those days, csh was more popular as an interactive shell. sh was used more for scripting. At least that's what I recall. bash didn't exist yet.