Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

Open source guy: pretty much everything I was using in 1996 is still around, but better.

The xBase family of languages/development environments. They are still around - Harbour (open-source multi-platform Clipper implementation) and Ashton-Tate dBase which changed many hands and is now dBase LLC.

They were one of the fastest environments to build business software in till the early 90s. Then Client/Server and Windows happened. Visual Basic and Delphi occupied the niche with support for SQL based databases. xBase tried playing catch-up but by the time they caught up clunkily to GUI programming, the effort was wasted and the Web came around.

This is how xBase was loved:

    This isn't a question or a bug or a complaint. This is just to say
    that using your prg files from Foxapp, modifying the startup,
    creating a database, compiling and debugging I created an
    beautiful working application in 45 minutes today, including the
    time it took for the client to explain what they wanted in the
    database. The client was duly impressed, and I marvelled at just
    how much 2.0 had made programming fun and had increased my
    potential income. I am now taking on programming jobs that would
    have been painful in the past, and find that I can afford to do
    some pro bono work knowing that with Foxpro 2.0 and my
    distribution package I can whip up a quick database for the church
    or the school or anybody who just can't afford custom programming.

    I've been hacking PCs since I bought an Apple at Homebrew Computer
    Club in Palo Alto from a couple of kids who were building them in
    a garage. (In those days they were talking about marketing them as
    a multilevel, like Amway). I've played with a lot of software,
    ranging from user-hostile to stuff that curls up on your lap and
    talks dirty in your ear.

    But Foxpro 2.0 is something special. What you folks have created
    is an elegant solution. When you finaly go public, may you all
    cash out as rich as Bill Gates.

    Please thank all the Fox folks for me.

    Charles

    -- "Letter from a FoxPro admirer". FoxTales: Behind the Scenes at Fox Software, Kerry Nietz.

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The Lisp Machine.

Digg Reader is decent.

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