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Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

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Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#721

Post by bitwize »

Framework. Technically still maintained, but a shadow of its former self. In a word, it was more or less Emacs for the office -- built around a unifying metaphor of "frames" rather than buffers. A frame could contain anything: text, graphics, numbers, even other frames, and on this basis was built a word processor, spreadsheet, database, graphing facility, and a powerful outliner that was as close as an 80s PC got to org-mode. Tying it all together was a sort of mouseless GUI that let you open and manipulate documents visually, and a scripting language that was essentially Lisp disguised to resemble Lotus 1-2-3 macros for familiarity.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#723

Post by froindt »

freehunter wrote: post #364
mcv wrote: post #221

Choo Choo Steam Trains, for iOS ( http://www.apptism.com/lifestyle/chillingo-ltd/choo-choo-ste... ) This was a brilliant train game that vanished from the Earth. We used to have the paid version on an iPad, but I think it vanished after an iOS update. My dad has the limited free version on his old iPad that he doesn't update to preserve this game. I think it's a shame that this game disappeared (also because I paid f…

Speaking of railroad simulation games, Sid Meier's Railroads! is still one of my favorite games of all time, even though it doesn't work on any system with more than 2GB of RAM. Everything about that game was perfect. Nothing has matched it since.

How does Sid Meier's Railroads compare to Railroad Tycoon? Growing up I played Railroad Tycoon II and Monopoly Tycoon a lot, which actually gave pretty good lessons in business. Issuing bonds at 7% are annoying to pay back, understanding overhead costs, etc.

Also, for what it's worth, Railroads seems to be on Steam for $9.99. Pretty sure it'd work with more than 2 GB of RAM. There's also a bundle with Railroad Tycoon II and 3 for $14.99.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#724

Post by artificial »

bitcrusher wrote: post #311

BeOS... but modernized. Haiku doesn’t hit the right notes and BeOS was so freaking amazing for its time.

Completely agree, I'd dive in with both feet. The lame hardware support still bothers me. I remember being amazed at being able to restart servers, like say if the sound died. I've been watching Haiku and the progress...

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#725

Post by will_pseudonym »

apapli wrote: post #703

MS Access. It was still easier to build quite powerful apps covering the UX, controller and model than the commercial alternatives today. In many aspects cloud application development is only just catching up with 20 year old declarative frameworks of yesteryear.

MS Access is still around. Did it change for the worse from previous versions?

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#726

Post by starik36 »

Professional Write for DOS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfs:Write) was such an efficient little world processing program. It also had an internal contacts application so that you could mail merge your documents.

Another one is QBasic/QuickBasic. I have yet to see a modern programming language that lets you get started that easy.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#727

Post by mr-ron »

sentrysapper wrote: post #463
sheepybloke wrote: post #176

Is no one going to mention Pebble? It's the only smartwatch I've ever wanted, and I was so sad that it got bought and died right when I had enough money to spend some on a smart watch. It just had the perfect combo of good design, long battery life, and usability.

Pebble definitely deserves a mention. Lost mine this October on a high dive. Had it for three years never had an issue with it. I was feeling okay with it for awhile, but then I started missing meetings at work and time sensitive texts - was too used to having easy access to it my calendar and notifications. Started looking for a comparable smartwatch: always on, good battery life, and Android notifications, there's…

I found the same thing in an amazfit bip

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#728

Post by paradoxparalax »

First of All, The living-dead waiting impatiently to get out of the grave named - Myth , The Fallen Lords - or TFL, and the Myth family, if possible, except for the not-suicidal dwarf, let it in the grave and bring the suicidal on. And then maybe Brice4, was fun to make the landscapes, if it could export to Unity3d's skyboxes then it would be even useful. The Basic Programming language's chatbots were magic, with so limited resources, if one want to get nostalgic.
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