Famous Software history

1978): Lattner is the primary creator of LLVM (formerly Low Level Virtual Machine), an infrastructure project used to develop compiler front and back ends.

Back in 1982, at the height of the cold war tensions between the USA and USSR, the Soviet government built a gas pipeline that ran on advanced automated control software.

Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) based on this philosophy in 1985.

She founded Hamilton Technologies, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1986, where she continues to serve as CEO. The company developed Hamilton’s Universal Systems Language (USL) as well as the mathematical theory Development Before the Fact (DBTF).

Thomas, while earning a PhD at the University of Michigan, had created an early version of the program in 1987, and John saw a practical use for it as a special effects staff member at Industrial Light & Magic.

In a marketing blitz, Microsoft distributed 450,000 disks containing a demonstration version of its Word program in the November issue of PC World magazine, giving readers a chance to try the program for free. It competed with WordPerfect for market share as a word processing program, and it was not until Microsoft Word for Windows was introduced in 1989 that it became a global standard.

In February 1991 (First Gulf War), an Iraqi missile hit the US base of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, killing 28 American soldiers.

On August 24th, 1995, Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system was launched with one of the most sweeping media campaigns in the history of computing.

On June 4th, 1996 and only 30 seconds after the launch, the Ariane 5 rocket began to disintegrate slowly until its final explosion.

A study in 1997 estimated that over 200 billion lines of COBOL code was still in existence, accounting for 80% of all business software code.

Losing $20 from your wallet is probably enough to ruin your day — how would it feel to lose a $125 million spacecraft? NASA engineers found out back in 1998 when the Mars Climate Orbiter burned up after getting too close to the surface of Mars.

The concern was that computer systems around the world would not be able to cope with dates after December 31, 1999, due to the fact that most computers and operating systems only used two digits to represent the year, disregarding the 19 prefix for the twentieth century.

The Millennium Bug, AKA the notorious Y2K, was a massive concern in the lead-up to the year 2000.

Additional reading: C. Lattner and V. Adve (2003), “Architecture For a Next-Generation GCC”

Back in 2004, the UK government introduced a new and complex system to manage the operations of the Child Support Agency (CSA). The contract was awarded to IT services company Electronic Data Systems (EDS). The system was called CS2, and there were problems as soon as it went live.

It was developed by Bram Cohen and was initially an open source program, but became closed source in 2005.

Additional reading: M. Hamilton and W. R. Hackler (2008), “Universal Systems Language: Lessons Learned from Apollo”

The Mac OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard") update, released in 2009, completed the Mac's transition from a 32-bit to a 64-bit operating system.

In 2010, desiring a more effective means of building software apps for iPhones, iPads, and Macs, Lattner started developing a programing language for Apple called Swift.

Additional reading: B. Edwards (2011), “Carol Shaw, Atari’s First Female Video Game Developer”

Additional reading: B. Eich (2013), “Mozilla at 15: Memories and Thoughts on Mozilla Research”

The Windows XP operating system is released. For example, in 2014, 95% of the world’s automated teller machines ran XP. Microsoft support for XP ended on April 8, 2014.

Additional reading: B. Gates (2016), “How Math Secretly Affects Your Life”