Examples of apps still available:
- Quarx: QuarkXPress (1987)
- Corel: WordPerfect (bought by Corel in 1996), CorelDraw (1989)
- Xara: Xara (1994) - a Windows vector illustration app still in development
- Fontlab: Fontlab (1993 for Windows)
- Bare Bones Software: BBEdit (1993)
- UltraEdit: UltraEdit (1994)
- Borland/Embarcadero: Delphi (1995)
- Fantaisie Software: PureBasic (2000 for Windows)
- IBM/Eclipse Foundation: Eclipse (2001)
What other examples of desktop apps 20+ years old and still in development? (Excluding Microsoft, Apple and Adobe examples because everyone recognise their apps.)
From memory: VLC, GIMP, Blender, Audacity, Firefox, Gedit, OpenOffice, XBMC (now Kodi), FileZilla - the list is HUGE
Find your favourites here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open-source_s...
"The first operational EMACS system existed in late 1976."[0]
[0] http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5736/AIM-519A....
Staroffice which became OpenOffice and Then Libreoffice would be another
AutoCAD is 40 years old
Happy to see it's still maintained, according to Wikipedia, last update this month. Even happier to see it's open source(!?) I can't remember if it was always open source or if it became open source at some point.
There was another editor that I liked at that time, though, and it's possible I'm confusing which one I paid for. But Notepad++ won in the end.
Photoshop, the grand-daddy, released in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop
After effects was Aldus in 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_After_Effects
3D software:
Cinema4D was released for the Amiga in 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_4D
Lightwave 3D started in 1990: https://www.lightwave3d.com/
Poser was started in 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poser_(software)
3DS max in 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_3ds_Max
Maya was released in 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_Maya
Fusion compositing software has been around since 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmagic_Fusion
OmniGraffle started in 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OmniGraffle
- xScope (https://xscopeapp.com/history) — OK, I’m cheating, 19 years, but still a notable tool in my toobox
- Transmit (https://panic.com/transmit/) — Though it debuted as “Transit”, it’s been going since 1998
Beyond Compare is perfect software (in my not so humble opinion). I use it every day.
https://www.scootersoftware.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IrfanView
All UIs are made of text and symbolic visual elements. Whether you draw your button with unicode block characters, a GtkButton, a Flutter TextButton, or a HTML <button> does not matter in the slightest from the perspective of being a desktop app or having a UI.
The reason an Android an iOS app is not a desktop app is because it does not run on a desktop. A minor distinction, but the way we use our pocket computers is different from how we use our desk computers and so we distinguish between them. The line gets beautifully blurred once you run the iOS app on macOS or Android app on Windows 11, but humans are bad at categorizing things in ways that remain consistent for more than a few years - just ask any biologist.
Ok, fair, but a very unusual definition.
> All UIs are made of text and symbolic visual elements. Whether you draw your button with unicode block characters, a GtkButton, a Flutter TextButton, or a HTML <button> does not matter in the slightest from the perspective of being a desktop app or having a UI.
But it does matter for a _G_UI whether you have actual graphical elements, or just text. There is a significant differences in ability coming with those.
> The reason an Android an iOS app is not a desktop app is because it does not run on a desktop. A minor distinction, but the way we use our pocket computers is different from how we use our desk computers and so we distinguish between them.
Android and iOS do not run only on smartphones. People working on tablets, use them similar to the normal laptop/notebook/PC table-setup. Taking a classical PC-Desktop as the base of your definition falls apart very fast today.
> humans are bad at categorizing things in ways that remain consistent for more than a few years - just ask any biologist.
The established definition of desktop, mobile, gui, tui and commandline is pretty consistent for some decades now I would say.
Does that make ImGui a TUI? Or make TUIs a GUI? Why are those thin visual lines graphical, if the slightly thicker visual lines drawn by your graphical terminal emulator with support arbitrary color precision and inline image rendition is not?
Maybe the issue is that it there is a terminal emulator to visualize the representation. But if an application that is not graphically heavy and needs an intermediary is a TUI, does that make most utility electron apps TUIs?
The difference between a TUI and a GUI is just an implementation detail, and these do not matter in the distinction of desktop app or not. Heck, some modern terminal UIs are more graphically appealing than some GUI apps.
And remember, the question was about desktop, not GUI specifically.
> The established definition of desktop, mobile, gui, tui and commandline is pretty consistent for some decades now I would say.
Considering that all good desktop apps were TUI apps 3 decades ago, that mobile apps are in their modern form has basically only existed for 1.5 decades, and that running mobile apps as desktop apps and the general merge between the disciplines is only a few years old at most, I'd say that this statement doesn't quite hold.
What I see there is a spatial interface with complex layout, z-axis and graphical elements. A bit hard to replicate on a normal terminal.
> Does that make ImGui a TUI?
TUI and GUI are not defined by the actual complexity of a real application, but the environment which gives them theoretical abilities. With a GUI, you can have pixel-perfect control over every element. With a TUI, you are normally limited to character-level of control. Of course can you also use pixels without a desktop, but you would still leave the terminal-environment and enter the framebuffer for this or something similar. Though, to be fair, at this point it indeed can become a bit fuzzy.
So when I have pixel-perfect content render in a terminal emulator through Sixel graphics, and have inconsistent font rendition and problematic CSS box wrapping in a Web or Electron app, does that make the former GUI and the latter TUI? ;)
> TUI and GUI are not defined by the actual complexity of a real application, but the environment which gives them theoretical abilities.
And indeed, this gets to my point. The difference between a GUI and a TUI framework is more akin of the difference between, say, SwiftUI and WinForms, than something presenting a different mental model or experience for users. There are aesthetic differences, but there are just as stark differences between Win32, Aero, Metro and Sun Valley Windows GUI styles.
Sure, modern GUI applications can do more, but no user cares that Outlook could have had pressure-sensitive, angle-dependent Wacom tablet tool integration, and no so user would care that a TUI email client can't.
(to be clear, I love emacs, and use spacemacs as my distro!)
Any OS that has been around a while, and is still active (aka Windows, Linux, MacOS etc) will have lots and lots of long-life software.
It's an interesting dynamic because newer programmers have this impression that "software has a short life-span before it's eclipsed by something new and shiny."
In truth, it's the opposite. Y2K showed us that software literally written in the 60s was still in play (30+ years) and stuff from the 80s (10-20) years was common.
Even today COBOL programs exist, and that was unfashionable 30 years ago.
Sure your web-frontend, JavaScript framework-based interface might not last long, but the real software doing the work lasts a long long time.
This idea that you just rewrite everything every 5 years is a complete myth and yet every generation (including my own) has this impression when they start out.
20 years is actually not that old. When I attend conference's and take a straw-poll, many programmers there have a single product that originated in the DOS era, and have been actively built on for more than 30 years. DOS, 16 bit Windows, then 32 bit, even 64 bit, Web, Mobile, the more it changes the more it stays the same.
But there are a few exceptions.
Also: VLC, Matlab, Mathematica, many of the major DAW programs like Cubase
While a lot of packages have come and gone, the heavy hitters have been around a while:
The baby of the bunch is DS Solidworks 1995, still 27 years.https://supermemo.guru/wiki/SuperMemo_7
Cubase: 1989
Pro Tools: 1991
Logic Pro: 1993
FL Studio: 1997
Ableton Live: 2001
Max/MXP: 1980s, 90s as commercial product
Musescore 2002
Sibelius 1993
Encore 1984
Finale 1988
PuTTY SSH client is 24 years old
The mIRC IRC Client is 28 years old
Theatre Manager (https://www.artsman.com/about/) is, depending on how you count, up to 37 years old.
Firefox is over 20 years old if you count Phoenix.
Scribus will reach 20 years in a month
Inkscape will be 20 years old later this year
GIMP is 25
Thunderbird is very close to 20...
VLC is 22
MATLAB is nearly 40 years old, though it's current GUI version is probably 22 years old?
gpredict is 22
ROOT is nearly 30 years old
GNOME is 24 years old
Basically copy-pasted the folder to every new laptop/computer I used since. I tried several other image manipulation tools but always came back to launching psp.exe.
[EDIT: I see many people answered things like Firefox or Photoshop. As I understood your question, you meant software compiled 20 years ago or more and still running on modern computers. Otherwise, yes, I probably can include things like VLC, notepad++, Firefox, Office suite, etc. but it seems to me that is not the initial goal of your question.]
The technology has improved a lot even for basic operations such as resizing or fixing colours.
The only alternatives I read about is Gimp and Photoshop. I didn't like Gimp's usability at all and Photoshop just seemed too privacy invading.
>The first version of FruityLoops (1.0.0) was developed by Didier Dambrin and was partially released on December 18, 1997.[13] Its official launch was in early 1998
TLA Systems: PCalc (1992)
Flying Meat, Primate Labs: VoodooPad (2003)
C-Command Software: SpamSieve (2002)
The Omni Group: OmniOutliner (2000)
Mozilla: Firefox (2002)
Opera (1995)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omni_Group
https://www.doomworld.com/cacowards/
Also some games are crazy old and still developed Dwarf fortress is 2006 (almost 20 years old), Open TTD is 19 years old, probably some others as well.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth
1.0 / January 2001; 22 years ago
Initial release in Dec 2000.
FFmpeg 6.0 "Von Neumann" 6.0 was released on 2023-02-27
Edit: I see OP mentions Desktop software. It runs on Linux, Windows and Mac, so I guess that qualifies.
The lead developer regularly streams live coding sessions and quarterly project updates: https://pidgin.im/post/
KDE and Gnome probably have some old running apps too. There are many long-running open source desktop-apps I think, because there is no economical stress for its development.
In the commercial section I could name Directory Opus, DEVONthink, Maple, Mathematica, Pegasus Mail, The Bat!, Tinderbox
Coincidentally, this post is currently adjacent to one on the Thunderbird logo redesign: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36063943
Apparently we released it in 1997! https://www.amdocs.com/sites/default/files/2021-07/Actix-Ana...
It's a great language to learn when you're getting started. But I've long since moved on to more low-level, performant, and industry-standard languages.
GNOME Terminal (lists copyrights going back to 2002)
Notepad++ (running under WINE, first release in 2003)
Claws Mail (2001)
LibreOffice (forked from OpenOffice in 2010, OpenOffice was open sourced in 2000 and was based on StarOffice which was released in 1985)
Intellij IDEA (first release in 2001)
GNOME calculator (lists copyrights going back to 1986)
I use WinZIP with built-in encryption every day for incremental backups, also for password management (my password manager is a plain text file encrypted via WinZIP).
The NASTRAN system was released to NASA in 1968.
NASTRAN software application was written to help design more efficient space vehicles such as the Space Shuttle. NASTRAN was released to the public in 1971 by NASA's Office of Technology Utilization. The commercial use of NASTRAN has helped to analyze the behavior of elastic structures of any size, shape, or purpose. For example, the automotive industry uses the program to design front suspension systems and steering linkages. It is also used in designing railroad tracks and cars, bridges, power plants, skyscrapers, and aircraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nastran
CuteFTP (1996)
Quicken (1983)
TextPad (1992)
TurboTax (1984)
VLC media player (2001)
WinSCP (2000)
Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) (1998)
There are a handful more up-and-comers in the 16-19yr bracket as well. And tons that I still use, but aren't actively maintained anymore.
https://visualprogramming.net/
AutoCAD comes to mind first, but Siemens NX (Unigraphics) existed before and is still currently sold. Dassault CATIA is another CAD software older than 40 years.
PTC Creo (Pro/E), McNeel Rhino 3d, Dassault Sold Works, Archicad, also are software packages with really long life spans.
You can also include plugins and support tools such as simulation modules, and render plugins. Many of which have been around for 20+ years, but are too numerous to list.
https://www.jmp.com/en_us/company/about-us.html
VLC ~22 years
- Xorg itself (2004)
Xorg is a 2004 fork of XFree86, which is a 1992 fork of X386, first released in 1991.
- Photoshop
- Gimp
- Blender
- Maya 3D
- 3ds Max
- Audacity
- Ableton Live
Office stuff:
- Microsoft Office
- SAP ERPs
Finale (1988) Music notation software
Now it belongs to Apple but it was only acquired about 20 years ago
https://www.advancedinstaller.com/version-history.html
- CTWM
- ImageMagick
- Dillo
Initial release date: February 28, 1995
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2003_software
CD/DVD writing software is gone, from life, possibly still being developed. Yep still going strong https://www.cyberlink.com/blog/media-player-windows/983/best...