90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon's law), but as I understand both commercial and free software advanced quite a bit in the 1990s: Visual BASIC, HyperCard 2.0, Java, JavaScript, Linux, MacOS System 7-9, TrueType, Windows 95, Windows NT, Photoshop, Microsoft Office, Encarta, Lotus Notes 2.0, MPEG, QuickTime, video editing (Video Toaster etc.), Pro Tools, MP3 encoders/players and WinAmp, Acrobat and PDF software, WWW, Apache, NCSA Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, FrontPage (and other html editors), ICQ and Instant Messenger, video conferencing (CU-SeeMe), various IDEs (Eclipse), etc. Not to mention incredible developments in PC, console and arcade games...
VB -> OKish, but TCL/Tk and a bit of C did wonders under Unix.
NT -> Good, advanced
95 -> Mediocre against Amiga/Mac.
MSO -> Polished turd and uberused, giving disasters such as the renaming on Genomics and tons of papers now being void.
MPEG -> Good, bound to TV and multimedia standards.
QT -> Propietary crap, but QT3D was and it's still interesting. Lqtplay from libquicktime plays them well.
MP3 -> Opus and OGG preferred here
Acrobat/PDF -> PostScript and DJVU
Netscape/FrontPage -> Damn crazy bloat with opaque formats on tons of stuff not bound to proper terminology. Even using Emacs editing HTML pages seems easier. Composer looked easier than FP, for sure.
Videoconf -> Yes, h323 and friends.
IDE's -> A lot of them were better under DOS or very bloated under Windows, such as Eclipse, Netbeans...
PC/Console -> Yep, 3DFX/Glide and free Unixen, but consoles went downhill, the PC was set ahead since the Unreal engine.
DOS IDEs (Turbo Pascal etc.) do seem pretty great, but they wouldn't help you build GUI apps the way you could with VB, Delphi (a successor to Turbo Pascal), Java, etc. Tcl/Tk is also a product of the 1990s, both open source and commercial, which made GUI app development faster and easier, though I am not sure if it had a good IDE.
(I think we're indebted to Sun for wasting money on things like Java and Tcl/Tk, projects that weren't closely related to their core business but which benefited the rest of the industry.)
Most of the things you mention are also products of the 1990s, providing additional evidence for the claim that software advanced quite a bit on both the proprietary and free software sides during that decade.
I think this may be judgment in retrospect. The original combination of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint was undoubtedly useful and became more so with integration. It's too bad that competition from Lotus, Apple/Claris, WordPerfect/Novell/Corel, open source alternatives, etc. didn't affect Office's dominance. Google had a great head start over Office 365 with Docs but didn't pursue it.
90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon's law), but as I understand both commercial and free software advanced quite a bit in the 1990s: Visual BASIC, HyperCard 2.0, Java, JavaScript, Linux, MacOS System 7-9, TrueType, Windows 95, Windows NT, Photoshop, Microsoft Office, Encarta, Lotus Notes 2.0, MPEG, QuickTime, video editing (Video Toaster etc.), Pro Tools, MP3 encoders/players and WinAmp, Acrobat and PDF software, WWW, Apache, NCSA Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, FrontPage (and other html editors), ICQ and Instant Messenger, video conferencing (CU-SeeMe), various IDEs (Eclipse), etc. Not to mention incredible developments in PC, console and arcade games...
Ehhh... I disagree.
Java -> Bloated compared to Icon/TCL
VB -> OKish, but TCL/Tk and a bit of C did wonders under Unix.
NT -> Good, advanced
95 -> Mediocre against Amiga/Mac.
MSO -> Polished turd and uberused, giving disasters such as the renaming on Genomics and tons of papers now being void.
MPEG -> Good, bound to TV and multimedia standards.
QT -> Propietary crap, but QT3D was and it's still interesting. Lqtplay from libquicktime plays them well.
MP3 -> Opus and OGG preferred here
Acrobat/PDF -> PostScript and DJVU
Netscape/FrontPage -> Damn crazy bloat with opaque formats on tons of stuff not bound to proper terminology. Even using Emacs editing HTML pages seems easier. Composer looked easier than FP, for sure.
Videoconf -> Yes, h323 and friends.
IDE's -> A lot of them were better under DOS or very bloated under Windows, such as Eclipse, Netbeans...
PC/Console -> Yep, 3DFX/Glide and free Unixen, but consoles went downhill, the PC was set ahead since the Unreal engine.
DOS IDEs (Turbo Pascal etc.) do seem pretty great, but they wouldn't help you build GUI apps the way you could with VB, Delphi (a successor to Turbo Pascal), Java, etc. Tcl/Tk is also a product of the 1990s, both open source and commercial, which made GUI app development faster and easier, though I am not sure if it had a good IDE.
(I think we're indebted to Sun for wasting money on things like Java and Tcl/Tk, projects that weren't closely related to their core business but which benefited the rest of the industry.)
Most of the things you mention are also products of the 1990s, providing additional evidence for the claim that software advanced quite a bit on both the proprietary and free software sides during that decade.
> MSO -> Polished turd and uberused
I think this may be judgment in retrospect. The original combination of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint was undoubtedly useful and became more so with integration. It's too bad that competition from Lotus, Apple/Claris, WordPerfect/Novell/Corel, open source alternatives, etc. didn't affect Office's dominance. Google had a great head start over Office 365 with Docs but didn't pursue it.
I disagree, if it was such a great thing for software creators, we wouldn't be seeing everyone going back to similar licenses in spirit.
Alternatively, placing software behind API paying walls.
>Placing software behind paid API's...
- Hello, MSN network.
- Hello, closed memory-dump formats for Microsoft Office.
- You don't play this niche audio/video format? Install this new adware player, and now you will. Oh, enjoy this new adware toolbar.
- Shareware/nagware. Enough said.
- Software patents and codecs. MP3 encoder for streaming? Pay. MPEG encoder/decoder for a custom A/V project? Pay. And so on.