1.
Software developer
–
A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process, including the research, design, programming, and testing of computer software. Other job titles which are used with similar meanings are programmer, software analyst. According to developer Eric Sink, the differences between system design, software development, and programming are more apparent, even more so that developers become systems architects, those who design the multi-leveled architecture or component interactions of a large software system. In a large company, there may be employees whose sole responsibility consists of one of the phases above. In smaller development environments, a few people or even an individual might handle the complete process. The word software was coined as a prank as early as 1953, before this time, computers were programmed either by customers, or the few commercial computer vendors of the time, such as UNIVAC and IBM. The first company founded to provide products and services was Computer Usage Company in 1955. The software industry expanded in the early 1960s, almost immediately after computers were first sold in mass-produced quantities, universities, government, and business customers created a demand for software. Many of these programs were written in-house by full-time staff programmers, some were distributed freely between users of a particular machine for no charge. Others were done on a basis, and other firms such as Computer Sciences Corporation started to grow. The computer/hardware makers started bundling operating systems, systems software and programming environments with their machines, new software was built for microcomputers, so other manufacturers including IBM, followed DECs example quickly, resulting in the IBM AS/400 amongst others. The industry expanded greatly with the rise of the computer in the mid-1970s. In the following years, it created a growing market for games, applications. DOS, Microsofts first operating system product, was the dominant operating system at the time, by 2014 the role of cloud developer had been defined, in this context, one definition of a developer in general was published, Developers make software for the world to use. The job of a developer is to crank out code -- fresh code for new products, code fixes for maintenance, code for business logic, bus factor Software Developer description from the US Department of Labor
2.
IBM
–
International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
3.
Software release life cycle
–
Usage of the alpha/beta test terminology originated at IBM. As long ago as the 1950s, IBM used similar terminology for their hardware development, a test was the verification of a new product before public announcement. B test was the verification before releasing the product to be manufactured, C test was the final test before general availability of the product. Martin Belsky, a manager on some of IBMs earlier software projects claimed to have invented the terminology, IBM dropped the alpha/beta terminology during the 1960s, but by then it had received fairly wide notice. The usage of beta test to refer to testing done by customers was not done in IBM, rather, IBM used the term field test. Pre-alpha refers to all activities performed during the project before formal testing. These activities can include requirements analysis, software design, software development, in typical open source development, there are several types of pre-alpha versions. Milestone versions include specific sets of functions and are released as soon as the functionality is complete, the alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing. In this phase, developers generally test the software using white-box techniques, additional validation is then performed using black-box or gray-box techniques, by another testing team. Moving to black-box testing inside the organization is known as alpha release, alpha software can be unstable and could cause crashes or data loss. Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version, in general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon in proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions. The alpha phase usually ends with a freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature complete, Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. Software in the stage is also known as betaware. Beta phase generally begins when the software is complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs. Software in the phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing, the process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it. Beta version software is useful for demonstrations and previews within an organization
4.
Operating system
–
An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 83. 3%. MacOS by Apple Inc. is in place, and the varieties of Linux is in third position. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors, other specialized classes of operating systems, such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. A single-tasking system can run one program at a time. Multi-tasking may be characterized in preemptive and co-operative types, in preemptive multitasking, the operating system slices the CPU time and dedicates a slot to each of the programs. Unix-like operating systems, e. g. Solaris, Linux, cooperative multitasking is achieved by relying on each process to provide time to the other processes in a defined manner. 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows used cooperative multi-tasking, 32-bit versions of both Windows NT and Win9x, used preemptive multi-tasking. Single-user operating systems have no facilities to distinguish users, but may allow multiple programs to run in tandem, a distributed operating system manages a group of distinct computers and makes them appear to be a single computer. The development of networked computers that could be linked and communicate with each other gave rise to distributed computing, distributed computations are carried out on more than one machine. When computers in a work in cooperation, they form a distributed system. The technique is used both in virtualization and cloud computing management, and is common in large server warehouses, embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems. They are designed to operate on small machines like PDAs with less autonomy and they are able to operate with a limited number of resources. They are very compact and extremely efficient by design, Windows CE and Minix 3 are some examples of embedded operating systems. A real-time operating system is a system that guarantees to process events or data by a specific moment in time. A real-time operating system may be single- or multi-tasking, but when multitasking, early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could run different programs in succession to speed up processing
5.
DOS
–
None of these systems were officially named DOS, and indeed DOS is a general term for disk operating system. MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, and Microsoft Windows, still ran on top of it until about 2001, dozens of other operating systems also use the acronym DOS, including DOS/360 from 1966. Others are Apple DOS, Apple ProDOS, Atari DOS, Commodore DOS, TRSDOS, see List of DOS operating systems § Other operating systems. IBM PC DOS and its predecessor, 86-DOS, resembled Digital Researchs CP/M—the dominant disk operating system for 8-bit Intel 8080, DOS instead ran on Intel 8086 16-bit processors. Starting with MS-DOS1.28 and PC DOS2.0 the operating system incorporated various features inspired by Xenix, when IBM introduced the IBM PC, built with the Intel 8088 microprocessor, they needed an operating system. Seeking an 8088-compatible build of CP/M, IBM initially approached Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, IBM was sent to Digital Research, and a meeting was set up. However, the negotiations for the use of CP/M broke down, Digital Research wished to sell CP/M on a royalty basis, while IBM sought a single license. Digital Research founder Gary Kildall refused, and IBM withdrew, Gates in turn approached Seattle Computer Products. There, programmer Tim Paterson had developed a variant of CP/M-80, the system was initially named QDOS, before being made commercially available as 86-DOS. Microsoft purchased 86-DOS, allegedly for $50,000 and this became Microsoft Disk Operating System, MS-DOS, introduced in 1981. Within a year Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to over 70 other companies, Microsoft later required the use of the MS-DOS name, with the exception of the IBM variant. IBM continued to develop their version, PC DOS, for the IBM PC, Digital Research became aware that an operating system similar to CP/M was being sold by IBM, and threatened legal action. IBM responded by offering an agreement, they would give PC consumers a choice of PC DOS or CP/M-86, side-by-side, CP/M cost almost $200 more than PC DOS, and sales were low. CP/M faded, with MS-DOS and PC DOS becoming the operating system for PCs. Microsoft originally sold MS-DOS only to original equipment manufacturers, one major reason for this was that not all early PCs were 100% IBM PC compatible. DOS was structured such that there was a separation between the specific device driver code and the DOS kernel. Microsoft provided an OEM Adaptation Kit which allowed OEMs to customize the device driver code to their particular system, by the early 1990s, most PCs adhered to IBM PC standards so Microsoft began selling MS-DOS in retail with MS-DOS5.0. In the mid-1980s Microsoft developed a version of DOS
6.
Microsoft Windows
–
Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone, defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20,1985, Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system, however, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold and this comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones, the most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console, Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the time and share the same kernel. Windows, The operating system for personal computers, tablets. The latest version is Windows 10, the main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple Inc. for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server, The operating system for server computers, the latest version is Windows Server 2016. Unlike its clients sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme, the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE, A lightweight version of its Windows sibling meant to operate as an operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers. The latest version is Windows PE10.0.10586.0, Windows Embedded, Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device that was too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. The following Windows families are no longer being developed, Windows 9x, Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile, The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile operating system
7.
OS/2
–
OS/2 is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for Operating System/2, because it was introduced as part of the generation change release as IBMs Personal System/2 line of second-generation personal computers. The first version of OS/2 was released in December 1987 and newer versions were released until December 2001, OS/2 was intended as a protected mode successor of PC DOS. Because of this heritage, OS/2 shares similarities with Unix, Xenix, IBM discontinued its support for OS/2 on 31 December 2006. Since then, it has been updated, maintained and marketed under the name eComStation, in 2015 it was announced that a new OEM distribution of OS/2 would be released that was to be called ArcaOS. The development of OS/2 began when IBM and Microsoft signed the Joint Development Agreement in August 1985 and it was code-named CP/DOS and it took two years for the first product to be delivered. OS/21.0 was announced in April 1987 and released in December, the original release is textmode-only, and a GUI was introduced with OS/21.1 about a year later. OS/2 features an API for controlling the display and handling keyboard. In addition, development tools include a subset of the video, a task-switcher named Program Selector is available through the Ctrl-Esc hotkey combination, allowing the user to select among multitasked text-mode sessions. Communications and database-oriented extensions were delivered in 1988, as part of OS/21.0 Extended Edition, SNA, X. 25/APPC/LU6.2, LAN Manager, Query Manager, SQL. The promised graphical user interface, Presentation Manager, was introduced with OS/21.1 in October,1988 and it had a similar user interface to Windows 2.1, which was released in May of that year. The Extended Edition of 1.1, sold only through IBM sales channels, introduced distributed database support to IBM database systems, in 1989, Version 1.2 introduced Installable Filesystems and notably the HPFS filesystem. HPFS provided a number of improvements over the older FAT file system, including long filenames, in addition, extended attributes were also added to the FAT file system. The Extended Edition of 1.2 introduced TCP/IP and Ethernet support, OS/2 and Windows-related books of the late 1980s acknowledged the existence of both systems and promoted OS/2 as the system for the future. The collaboration between IBM and Microsoft unravelled in 1990, between the releases of Windows 3.0 and OS/21.3, during this time, Windows 3.0 became a tremendous success, selling millions of copies in its first year. Much of its success was because Windows 3.0 was bundled with most new computers, OS/2, on the other hand, was available only as an expensive stand-alone software package. In addition, OS/2 lacked device drivers for many devices such as printers. Windows, on the hand, supported a much larger variety of hardware
8.
Classic Mac OS
–
This is a list of macOS components, features that are included in the current Mac operating system. Latest version 2.7 Automator is a developed by Apple Inc. Automator enables the repetition of tasks across a variety of programs, including Finder, Safari, Calendar, Contacts. It can also work with third-party applications such as Microsoft Office, the icon features a robot holding a pipe, a reference to pipelines, a computer science term for connected data workflows. Automator was first released with Mac OS X Tiger, Automator provides a graphical user interface for automating tasks without knowledge of programming or scripting languages. Tasks can be recorded as they are performed by the user or can be selected from a list, the output of the previous action can become the input to the next action. Automator comes with a library of Actions that act as individual steps in a Workflow document, a Workflow document is used to carry out repetitive tasks. Workflows can be saved and reused, unix command line scripts and AppleScripts can also be invoked as Actions. The actions are linked together in a Workflow, the Workflow can be saved as an application, Workflow file or a contextual menu item. Options can be set when the Workflow is created or when the Workflow is run, a workflow file created in Automator is saved in /Users//Library/Services. Latest version 10.8 Calculator is a calculator application made by Apple Inc. It has three modes, basic, scientific, and programmer, Basic includes a number pad, buttons for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, as well as memory keys. Scientific mode supports exponents and trigonometric functions, and programmer mode gives the user access to more options related to computer programming, Apple currently ships a different application called Grapher. Calculator has Reverse Polish notation support, and can speak the buttons pressed. The Calculator appeared first as an accessory in first version of Macintosh System for the 1984 Macintosh 128k. Its design was maintained with the basic math operations until the final release of classic Mac OS in 2002. A Dashboard Calculator widget is included in all versions of macOS from Mac OS X Tiger onwards and it only has the basic mode of its desktop counterpart. Since the release of OS X Yosemite, there is also a simple calculator widget available in the notifications area, since the release of Mac OS X Leopard, simple arithmetic functions can be calculated from Spotlight feature
9.
VM (operating system)
–
VM is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers. The first version, released in 1972, was VM/370, or officially Virtual Machine Facility/370 and this was a System/370 reimplementation of earlier CP/CMS operating system. The current version, z/VM, is widely used as one of the main full virtualization solutions for the mainframe market. The heart of the VM architecture is a program or hypervisor called VM-CP. It runs on the hardware, and creates the virtual machine environment. VM-CP provides full virtualization of the physical machine – including all I/O and it performs the systems resource-sharing, including device management, dispatching, virtual storage management, and other traditional operating system tasks. Each VM user is provided with a virtual machine having its own address space, virtual devices, etc. A given VM mainframe typically runs hundreds or thousands of virtual machine instances, VM-CP began life as CP-370, a reimplementation of CP-67, itself a reimplementation of CP-40. Running within each virtual machine is another, guest operating system, most virtual machines run CMS, a lightweight, single-user operating system. Its interactive environment is comparable to that of a single-user PC, including a system, programming services, device access. IBMs mainstream operating systems can be loaded and run without modification, most mainframe operating systems terminate a normal application which tries to usurp the operating systems privileges. A second level instance of VM can be fully virtualized inside a virtual machine and this is how VM development and testing is done. (A second-level VM can potentially implement a different virtualization of the hardware and this technique was used to develop S/370 software before S/370 hardware was available, and it has continued to play a role in new hardware development at IBM. The literature cites practical examples of five levels deep. Levels of VM below the top are also treated as applications, a copy of the mainframe version of AIX or Linux. In the mainframe environment, these systems often run under VM. Several non-CMS systems run within VM-CP virtual machines, providing services to CMS users such as spooling, interprocess communications and they operate behind the scenes, extending the services available to CMS without adding to the VM-CP control program. By running in virtual machines, they receive the same security and reliability protections as other VM users
10.
OpenVMS
–
OpenVMS is a computer operating system for use in general-purpose computing. It is the successor to the VMS Operating System, that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, in the 1990s, it was used for the successor series of DEC Alpha systems. OpenVMS also runs on the HP Itanium-based families of computers, as of 2015, a port to the X86-64 architecture is underway. The name VMS is derived from virtual memory system, according to one of its architectural features. OpenVMS is a operating system, but source code listings are available for purchase. OpenVMS is a multi-user, multiprocessing virtual memory-based operating system designed for use in time sharing, batch processing, when process priorities are suitably adjusted, it may approach real-time operating system characteristics. The system offers high availability through clustering and the ability to distribute the system over multiple physical machines and this allows the system to be tolerant against disasters that may disable individual data-processing facilities. OpenVMS contains a user interface, a feature that was not available on the original VAX-11/VMS system. Versions of VMS running on DEC Alpha workstations in the 1990s supported OpenGL, customers using OpenVMS include banks and financial services, hospitals and healthcare, network information services, and large-scale industrial manufacturers of various products. As of mid-2014, Hewlett Packard licensed the development of OpenVMS exclusively to VMS Software Inc, VMS Software will be responsible for developing OpenVMS, supporting existing hardware and providing roadmap to clients. The company has a team of developers that originally developed the software during DECs ownership. In April 1975, Digital Equipment Corporation embarked on a project, code named Star. A companion software project, code named Starlet, was started in June 1975 to develop a new operating system, based on RSX-11M. These two projects were integrated from the beginning. Gordon Bell was the VP lead on the VAX hardware and its architecture, the Star and Starlet projects culminated in the VAX 11/780 computer and the VAX-11/VMS operating system. The Starlet name survived in VMS as a name of several of the system libraries, including STARLET. OLB. Over the years the name of the product has changed, in 1980 it was renamed, with version 2.0 release, to VAX/VMS. g. The smallest MicroVAX2000 had a 40MB RD32 hard disk and a maximum of 6MB of RAM, microVMS kits were released for VAX/VMS4.4 to 4.7 on TK50 tapes and RX50 floppy disks, but discontinued with VAX/VMS5.0
11.
Unix
–
Among these is Apples macOS, which is the Unix version with the largest installed base as of 2014. Many Unix-like operating systems have arisen over the years, of which Linux is the most popular, Unix was originally meant to be a convenient platform for programmers developing software to be run on it and on other systems, rather than for non-programmer users. The system grew larger as the system started spreading in academic circles, as users added their own tools to the system. Unix was designed to be portable, multi-tasking and multi-user in a time-sharing configuration and these concepts are collectively known as the Unix philosophy. By the early 1980s users began seeing Unix as a universal operating system. Under Unix, the system consists of many utilities along with the master control program. To mediate such access, the kernel has special rights, reflected in the division between user space and kernel space, the microkernel concept was introduced in an effort to reverse the trend towards larger kernels and return to a system in which most tasks were completed by smaller utilities. In an era when a standard computer consisted of a disk for storage and a data terminal for input and output. However, modern systems include networking and other new devices, as graphical user interfaces developed, the file model proved inadequate to the task of handling asynchronous events such as those generated by a mouse. In the 1980s, non-blocking I/O and the set of inter-process communication mechanisms were augmented with Unix domain sockets, shared memory, message queues, and semaphores. In microkernel implementations, functions such as network protocols could be moved out of the kernel, Multics introduced many innovations, but had many problems. Frustrated by the size and complexity of Multics but not by the aims and their last researchers to leave Multics, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, M. D. McIlroy, and J. F. Ossanna, decided to redo the work on a much smaller scale. The name Unics, a pun on Multics, was suggested for the project in 1970. Peter H. Salus credits Peter Neumann with the pun, while Brian Kernighan claims the coining for himself, in 1972, Unix was rewritten in the C programming language. Bell Labs produced several versions of Unix that are referred to as Research Unix. In 1975, the first source license for UNIX was sold to faculty at the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science, UIUC graduate student Greg Chesson was instrumental in negotiating the terms of this license. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the influence of Unix in academic circles led to adoption of Unix by commercial startups, including Sequent, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX. In the late 1980s, AT&T Unix System Laboratories and Sun Microsystems developed System V Release 4, in the 1990s, Unix-like systems grew in popularity as Linux and BSD distributions were developed through collaboration by a worldwide network of programmers
12.
Spreadsheet
–
A spreadsheet is an interactive computer application for organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets are developed as computerized simulations of paper accounting worksheets, the program operates on data entered in cells of a table. Each cell may contain either numeric or text data, or the results of formulas that automatically calculate, a spreadsheet may also refer to one such electronic document. Spreadsheet users can adjust any stored value and observe the effects on calculated values and this makes the spreadsheet useful for what-if analysis since many cases can be rapidly investigated without manual recalculation. Modern spreadsheet software can have multiple interacting sheets, and can display either as text and numerals. Besides performing basic arithmetic and mathematical functions, modern spreadsheets provide built-in functions for financial and statistical operations. Such calculations as net present value or standard deviation can be applied to data with a pre-programmed function in a formula. Spreadsheet programs also provide conditional expressions, functions to convert between text and numbers, and functions operate on strings of text. Spreadsheets have replaced paper-based systems throughout the business world, although they were first developed for accounting or bookkeeping tasks, they now are used extensively in any context where tabular lists are built, sorted, and shared. LANPAR, available in 1969, was the first electronic spreadsheet on mainframe and time sharing computers, LANPAR was an acronym, LANguage for Programming Arrays at Random. VisiCalc was the first electronic spreadsheet on a microcomputer, and it helped turn the Apple II computer into a popular, Lotus 1-2-3 was the leading spreadsheet when DOS was the dominant operating system. Excel now has the largest market share on the Windows and Macintosh platforms, a spreadsheet program is a standard feature of an office productivity suite, since the advent of web apps, office suites now also exist in web app form. A spreadsheet consists of a table of cells arranged into rows and columns, X locations, the columns, are normally represented by letters, A, B, C, etc. while rows are normally represented by numbers,1,2,3, etc. A single cell can be referred to by addressing its row and column and this electronic concept of cell references was first introduced in LANPAR and a variant used in VisiCalc, and known as A1 notation. Additionally, spreadsheets have the concept of a range, a group of cells, for instance, one can refer to the first ten cells in the first column with the range A1, A10. LANPAR innovated forward referencing/natural order calculation which didnt re-appear until Lotus 123, in modern spreadsheet applications, several spreadsheets, often known as worksheets or simply sheets, are gathered together to form a workbook. A workbook is physically represented by a file, containing all the data for the book, the sheets, worksheets are normally represented by tabs that flip between pages, each one containing one of the sheets, although Numbers changes this model significantly. Cells in a multi-sheet book add the name to their reference, for instance
13.
Software license
–
A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law all software is copyright protected, in code as also object code form. The only exception is software in the public domain, most distributed software can be categorized according to its license type. Two common categories for software under copyright law, and therefore with licenses which grant the licensee specific rights, are proprietary software and free, unlicensed software outside the copyright protection is either public domain software or software which is non-distributed, non-licensed and handled as internal business trade secret. Contrary to popular belief, distributed unlicensed software is copyright protected. Examples for this are unauthorized software leaks or software projects which are placed on public software repositories like GitHub without specified license. As voluntarily handing software into the domain is problematic in some international law domains, there are also licenses granting PD-like rights. Therefore, the owner of a copy of software is legally entitled to use that copy of software. Hence, if the end-user of software is the owner of the respective copy, as many proprietary licenses only enumerate the rights that the user already has under 17 U. S. C. §117, and yet proclaim to take away from the user. Proprietary software licenses often proclaim to give software publishers more control over the way their software is used by keeping ownership of each copy of software with the software publisher. The form of the relationship if it is a lease or a purchase, for example UMG v. Augusto or Vernor v. Autodesk. The ownership of goods, like software applications and video games, is challenged by licensed. The Swiss based company UsedSoft innovated the resale of business software and this feature of proprietary software licenses means that certain rights regarding the software are reserved by the software publisher. Therefore, it is typical of EULAs to include terms which define the uses of the software, the most significant effect of this form of licensing is that, if ownership of the software remains with the software publisher, then the end-user must accept the software license. In other words, without acceptance of the license, the end-user may not use the software at all, one example of such a proprietary software license is the license for Microsoft Windows. The most common licensing models are per single user or per user in the appropriate volume discount level, Licensing per concurrent/floating user also occurs, where all users in a network have access to the program, but only a specific number at the same time. Another license model is licensing per dongle which allows the owner of the dongle to use the program on any computer, Licensing per server, CPU or points, regardless the number of users, is common practice as well as site or company licenses
14.
Lotus Software
–
Lotus Software was an American software company based in Massachusetts. Much later, in conjunction with Ray Ozzies Iris Associates, Lotus also released a groupware and email system, IBM purchased the company in 1995 for US$3. Lotus was founded in 1982 by partners Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs with backing from Ben Rosen, lotuss first product was presentation software for the Apple II known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after leaving his post as head of development at VisiCorp, the distributors of the Visicalc spreadsheet, shortly after Kapor left Visi-Corp, he and Sachs produced an integrated spreadsheet and graphics program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp had an agreement whereby Visi-Calc was being shipped simultaneously with the PC. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3 on January 26,1983, the name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manager. In practice the two functions were less often used, but 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet program available. In October 1984 he was named President, and in April 1986 he was appointed CEO, in July of that same year he also became Chairman of the Board. Manzi remained at the head of Lotus until 1995, as the popularity of the personal computer grew, Lotus quickly came to dominate the spreadsheet market. Lotus introduced other office products such as Ray Ozzies Symphony in 1984, Jazz did very poorly in the market. Also in 1985, Lotus bought Software Arts and discontinued its VisiCalc program, in the late 1980s Lotus developed Lotus Magellan, a file management and indexing utility. Improv also flopped, and none of these made a significant impact on the market. Lotus was involved in a number of lawsuits, of which the most significant were the look and this led Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, to found the League for Programming Freedom and hold protests outside Lotus Development offices. Paperback and Mosaic lost and went out of business, Borland won, the LPF filed an amicus curiae brief in the Borland case. In the 1990s, to compete with Microsofts Windows applications, Lotus had to buy in products such as Ami Pro, Approach, and Threadz, several applications were bundled together under the name Lotus SmartSuite. It now has very little market share, the last significant new release was the SmartSuite Millennium Edition released in 1999. All new development of the suite was ended in 2000, with ongoing maintenance being moved overseas, Lotus began its diversification from the desktop software business with its 1984 strategic founding investment in Ray Ozzies Iris Associates, the creator of its Lotus Notes groupware platform. Lotus initially brought Lotus Notes to market in 1989, and later reinforced its presence with the acquisition of cc
15.
IBM Personal Computer
–
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12,1981 and it was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida. IBM compatible became an important criterion for sales growth, only the Apple Macintosh family kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, International Business Machines, one of the worlds largest companies, had a 62% share of the mainframe computer market in 1981. Its share of the computer market, however, had declined from 60% in 1970 to 32% in 1980. In 1979 BusinessWeek asked, Is IBM just another stodgy, mature company, by 1981 its stock price had declined by 22%. IBMs earnings for the first half the year grew by 5. 3%—one third of the inflation rate—while those of minicomputer maker Digital Equipment Corporation grew by more than 35%. B. M, No longer dominates the computer business. IBM wished to avoid the outcome with the new personal computer industry, dominated by the Commodore PET, Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, Tandy Corporations TRS-80. With $150 million in sales by 1979 and projected growth of more than 40% in the early 1980s. The Japanese project, codenamed Go, ended before the 1981 release of the American-designed IBM PC codenamed Chess, whether IBM had waited too long to enter an industry in which Apple and others were already successful was unclear. An observer stated that IBM bringing out a computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance. Successful microcomputer company Vector Graphics fiscal 1980 revenue was $12 million, the company only sold through its internal sales force, had no experience with resellers or retail stores, and did not introduce the first product designed to work with non-IBM equipment until 1980. Another observer claimed that IBM made decisions so slowly that, when tested, as with other large computer companies, its new products typically required about four to five years for development. IBM had to learn how to develop, mass-produce. The potential importance to microcomputers of a company so prestigious, that a saying in American companies stated No one ever got fired for buying IBM, was nonetheless clear. InfoWorld, which described itself as The Newsweekly for Microcomputer Users, stated that for my grandmother, is far and away the media star, not because of its features, but because it exists at all. When the number eight company in the Fortune 500 enters the field, the influence of a personal computer made by a company whose name has literally come to mean computer to most of the world is hard to contemplate. The editorial acknowledged that some factions in our industry have looked upon IBM as the enemy, desktop sized programmable calculators by Hewlett Packard had evolved into the HP9830 BASIC language computer by 1972. In 1972–1973 a team led by Dr. SCAMP emulated an IBM1130 minicomputer to run APL\1130, in 1973 APL was generally available only on mainframe computers, and most desktop sized microcomputers such as the Wang 2200 or HP9800 offered only BASIC
16.
Killer application
–
In other words, consumers would buy the hardware just to run that application. A killer app can substantially increase sales of the platform on which it runs, One of the first recognized examples of a killer application is generally agreed to be the VisiCalc spreadsheet for the Apple II series. Because it was not available on computers for 12 months, people spent $100 for the software first. Others also chose to develop software, such as EasyWriter, for the Apple II first because of its sales, helping Apple defeat rivals Commodore International. Lotus 1-2-3 similarly benefited sales of the IBM PC and compatibles, noting that computer purchasers did not want PC compatibility as much as compatibility with certain PC software, InfoWorld suggested lets tell it like it is. Lets not say PC compatible, or even MS-DOS compatible, another killer app is WordStar, the most popular word processor during much of the 1980s. The UNIX Operating System served as an application for the DEC PDP-11 minicomputer. Many of the PDP-11 and VAX-11 processors never ran DECs operating systems, but instead, they ran UNIX, to get a virtual-memory UNIX you had to purchase a VAX-11 computer. Many universities wanted a general-purpose timesharing system that would meet the needs of students, from its inception UNIX could drive high-quality typesetting equipment and later Postscript printers using the nroff/troff typesetting language, and this was also unprecedented for its time. The first recorded use of the term in print was 1987, everybody has only one killer application. The secretary has a word processor, the definition of killer app came up during Bill Gatess questioning in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. antitrust case. Bill Gates had written an email in which he described Internet Explorer as a killer app, such a game is also known in gaming parlance as a system seller. Star Raiders, released in 1979, was considered to be the killer app for the Atari 400/800 computers, the port of Donkey Kong was the killer app for the ColecoVision console in 1982. Melee for the GameCube, and Wii Sports for the Nintendo Wii, john Madden Footballs popularity in 1990 helped the Genesis gain market share against the Super Nintendo. Sonic the Hedgehog, released in 1991, was hailed as a killer app as it revived sales of the three-year-old Genesis, street Fighter II, originally released for arcades in 1991, became a system-seller for the Super Nintendo when it was ported to the platform in 1992. Myst and The 7th Guest, both released in 1993, drove adoption of CD-ROM drives for personal computers. Pokémon Red and Blue could be classified a killer app for the seven-year-old Game Boy as a craze evolved around the series in the late 1990s, quake could be considered the killer app for 3dfxs Voodoo Graphics 3D accelerator card for home computers. Halo is considered to be the killer app for the Xbox console, bloodborne was known as the first killer app for the PlayStation 4 console
17.
VisiCalc
–
VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for the Apple II by VisiCorp. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a business tool. VisiCalc is considered the Apple IIs killer app and it sold over 700,000 copies in six years, and as many as 1 million copies over its history. Initially developed in a 6502 assembler running on the Multics time sharing system, VisiCalc was ported to numerous platforms, in order to do this, the company developed porting platforms that produced bug compatible versions. The company took the approach when the IBM PC was launched. Sales were initially brisk, with about 300,000 copies sold, VisiCalc used the A1 notation in formulas. When Lotus 1-2-3 was launched in 1983, taking advantage of the expanded memory and screen of the PC. Sales imploded so rapidly that the company was soon insolvent, Lotus Development purchased the company in 1985, and immediately ended sales of VisiCalc and the companys other products. VISICALC represented a new idea of a way to use a computer, — Ted Nelson VisiCalc traces its history to a presentation that Dan Bricklin was watching while attending Harvard Business School. The professor was creating a model on a blackboard that was ruled with lines to create a table. When the professor found an error or wanted to change a parameter, he had to erase, Bricklin realized that he could replicate the process on a computer using an electronic spreadsheet to view results of underlying formulae. Bricklin was joined by Bob Frankston, and the pair worked on VisiCalc for two months during the winter of 1978–79, forming Software Arts, Bricklin wrote that with the years of experience we had at the time we created VisiCalc, we were familiar with many row/column financial programs. However, these earlier timesharing programs were not completely interactive, nor did they run on personal computers, Frankston described VisiCalc as a magic sheet of paper that can perform calculations and recalculations, which allows the user to just solve the problem using familiar tools and concepts. Personal Software began selling it in mid-1979 for under $100, after a demonstration at the fourth West Coast Computer Faire and it required an Apple II with 32K of random-access memory, and supported saving files to magnetic tape cassette or Apples Disk II floppy disk system. VisiCalc was unusually easy to use and came with excellent documentation, ben Rosen speculated in July 1979 that VisiCalc could someday become the software tail that wags the personal computer dog. For the first 12 months it was available for the Apple II. Many bought $2000 Apples to run the software, even if they already owned computers. Apples rival Tandy Corporation used VisiCalc on its own Apple IIs, other software supported its Data Interchange Format to share data
18.
Apple II
–
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak. It was introduced in 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire by Jobs and was the first consumer product sold by Apple Computer and it is the first model in a series of computers which were produced until Apple IIe production ceased in November 1993. The Apple II marks Apples first launch of a computer aimed at a consumer market – branded towards American households rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists. Along with the PET2001 and the TRS-80, Byte magazine referred to these as the 1977 Trinity of personal computing. The Apple II had the feature of being able to display color graphics. By 1976, Steve Jobs had convinced the product designer Jerry Manock to create the shell for the Apple II – a smooth case inspired by kitchen appliances that would conceal the internal mechanics. The earliest Apple IIs were assembled in Silicon Valley, and later in Texas, printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland, the original retail price of the computer was $1,298 and $2,638. To reflect the color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing has rainbow stripes. Perhaps most significantly, the Apple II was a catalyst for personal computers across many industries, the Apple II used a multiplicity of idiosyncratic engineering shortcuts to save hardware and reduce costs. This arrangement simultaneously eliminated the need for a separate circuit for the DRAM chips. Similarly, in the graphics mode, color is determined by pixel position and can thus be implemented in software. This also allows for subpixel font rendering since orange and blue pixels appear half a pixel-width farther to the right on the screen than green, the Apple II at first used data cassette storage like most other microcomputers of the time. In 1978 the company introduced an external 5 1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive, the Disk II interface, created by Wozniak, is regarded as an engineering masterpiece for its economy of electronic components. The approach taken in the Disk II controller is typical of Wozniaks designs, with a few small-scale logic chips and a cheap PROM, he created a functional floppy-disk interface at a fraction of the component cost of standard circuit configurations. The cost of such terminals could easily exceed the price of the computer itself, the Apple IIs PCB underwent several revisions as Steve Wozniak made modifications to it. The earliest version was known as Revision 0, and the first 6000 units shipped used it, later revisions added a color killer circuit to prevent color fringing when the computer was in text mode, as well as modifications to improve the reliability of cassette I/O. Revision 0 Apple IIs powered up in a mode and had garbage on screen. This was eliminated on the later board revisions, Revision 0 Apple IIs could display only four colors, but Wozniak was later able to generate 16 in low-res mode
19.
Database
–
A database is a well organized collection of data. It is the collection of schemas, tables, queries, reports, views, a database management system is a computer software application that interacts with the user, other applications, and the database itself to capture and analyze data. A general-purpose DBMS is designed to allow the definition, creation, querying, update, well-known DBMSs include MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MariaDB, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, SAP HANA, MemSQL and IBM DB2. Sometimes a DBMS is loosely referred to as a database, formally, a database refers to a set of related data and the way it is organized. The DBMS provides various functions that allow entry, storage and retrieval of large quantities of information, because of the close relationship between them, the term database is often used casually to refer to both a database and the DBMS used to manipulate it. Outside the world of information technology, the term database is often used to refer to any collection of related data. This article is concerned only with databases where the size and usage requirements necessitate use of a management system. Update – Insertion, modification, and deletion of the actual data, retrieval – Providing information in a form directly usable or for further processing by other applications. The retrieved data may be available in a form basically the same as it is stored in the database or in a new form obtained by altering or combining existing data from the database. Both a database and its DBMS conform to the principles of a database model. Database system refers collectively to the model, database management system. Physically, database servers are dedicated computers that hold the actual databases and run only the DBMS, Database servers are usually multiprocessor computers, with generous memory and RAID disk arrays used for stable storage. RAID is used for recovery of data if any of the disks fail, hardware database accelerators, connected to one or more servers via a high-speed channel, are also used in large volume transaction processing environments. DBMSs are found at the heart of most database applications, DBMSs may be built around a custom multitasking kernel with built-in networking support, but modern DBMSs typically rely on a standard operating system to provide these functions. Since DBMSs comprise a significant market, computer and storage vendors often take into account DBMS requirements in their own development plans, databases are used to support internal operations of organizations and to underpin online interactions with customers and suppliers. Databases are used to hold information and more specialized data. A DBMS has evolved into a software system and its development typically requires thousands of human years of development effort. Some general-purpose DBMSs such as Adabas, Oracle and DB2 have been undergoing upgrades since the 1970s, general-purpose DBMSs aim to meet the needs of as many applications as possible, which adds to the complexity
20.
Multiplan
–
Multiplan was an early spreadsheet program developed by Microsoft. Known initially by the code name EP, it was introduced in 1982 as a competitor for VisiCalc, despite the release of Microsoft Chart, a graphics companion program, Multiplan continued to be outsold by Lotus 1-2-3. It was replaced by Microsoft Excel, which followed years later on both the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. Around 1983, during the development of the first release of Windows, however the plans changed a year later. Multiplan for the Macintosh, available the month Apple released the computer, was the first third-party Macintosh software, bill Gates was repeatedly heard in 1985 saying that Microsoft made more money on Multiplan for the Macintosh than any other platform. It was proficient at making graphs and charts and was bundled with some Macs. However, Multiplan only lasted for about a year before being overtaken by the more successful Excel, the latest version of System Software that Multiplan 1.1 was tested with is System Software 2.0 which used System 4.1 and Finder 5.5. A fundamental difference between Multiplan and its competitors was Microsofts decision to use R1C1 addressing instead of the A1 addressing introduced by VisiCalc, Microsoft carried Multiplans R1C1 legacy forward into Microsoft Excel, which offers both addressing modes, although A1 is MS Excels default addressing mode. Ahoy. called the Commodore 64 version of Multiplan, distributed by Human Engineered Software, there is not enough room in this article to mention all the mathematical operations performed. Documentation is lengthy but well written, a second review in the magazine noted the limitation of the computers 40-column screen, but praised the ability to stop any ongoing action. It also praised the documentation, and concluded that its ease of use and foolproof design make Multiplan an outstanding value
21.
SuperCalc
–
SuperCalc is a CP/M-80 spreadsheet application published by Sorcim in 1980. Visicalc was the first spreadsheet program but was not available for the popular CP/M operating system, SuperCalc was created to fill that void and market opportunity. It was originally bundled as one of the CP/M applications included with the Osborne 1 portable computer and it quickly became popular for CP/M and was ported to MS-DOS in 1982. An improvement over VisiCalc, SuperCalc was one of the first spreadsheet programs capable of iteratively solving circular references, according to the SuperCalc product manager, iterative calculations were added when Sorcim changed from binary-coded decimal to binary math. Since the precision of the two math packages was different, some IF statements resolved differently, and iterative calculations helped solve this problem. Versions of SuperCalc were later released for the Apple II family, for PCs running DOS, the MS-DOS versions were more popular with many users than was the market-leading Lotus 1-2-3 because it was distributed without copy protection. By the release of version 3 in March 1987, a million users were claimed, new versions were published into the early 90s after which Excel effectively came to dominate the spreadsheet market
22.
DBase
–
DBase was one of the first database management systems for microcomputers, and the most successful in its day. The dBase system includes the core engine, a query system, a forms engine. DBases underlying file format, the. dbf file, is used in applications needing a simple format to store structured data. DBase was originally published by Ashton-Tate for microcomputer operating system CP/M in 1980, on the PC platform, in particular, dBase became one of the best-selling software titles for a number of years. A major upgrade was released as dBase III, and ported to a variety of platforms, adding UNIX. By the mid-1980s, Ashton-Tate was one of the big three software publishers in the business software market, the others being Lotus Development and WordPerfect. Starting in the mid-1980s, several companies produced their own variations on the dBase product and these included FoxBASE+, Clipper, and other so-called xBase products. Many of these were technically stronger than dBase, but could not push it aside in the market and this changed with the disastrous introduction of dBase IV, whose design and stability were so poor that many users switched to other products. At the same time, there was growing use of IBM-invented SQL in database products, another factor was user adoption of Microsoft Windows on desktop computers. The shift toward SQL and Windows put pressure on the makers of xBase products to invest in major redesign to provide new capabilities, in spite of growing pressure to evolve, in the early 1990s xBase products constituted the leading database platform for implementing business applications. The size and impact of the market did not go unnoticed, and within one year. Borland purchased Ashton-Tate, Microsoft bought Fox Software, and Computer Associates acquired Nantucket, however, by the following decade most of the original xBase products had faded from prominence and several disappeared. Products known as dBase still exist, owned by dBase LLC, in 1971 Thompson collaborated with Jack Hatfield, a programmer at JPL, to write an enhanced version of RETRIEVE which became the JPLDIS project. JPLDIS was written in FORTRAN on the UNIVAC1108 mainframe, and was presented publicly in 1973, when Hatfield left JPL in 1974, Jeb Long took over his role. While working at JPL as a contractor, C. Wayne Ratliff entered the football pool. He had no interest in the game, but felt he could win the pool by processing the post-game statistics found in newspapers, in order to do this, he turned his attention to a database system and, by chance, came across the documentation for JPLDIS. He used this as the basis for a port to PTDOS on his kit-built IMSAI8080 microcomputer and they entered into an agreement with Ratliff to market Vulcan, and formed Ashton-Tate to do so. Ratliff ported Vulcan from PTDOS to CP/M, hal Pawluk, who handled marketing for the nascent company, decided to change the name to the more business-like dBase
23.
WordPerfect
–
WordPerfect is a word processing application owned by Corel with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. The program was developed under contract at Brigham Young University for use on a Data General minicomputer in 1979. The authors retained the rights to the program, forming Satellite Software International to sell it under the name WordPerfect in 1980, a port to MS-DOS followed in 1982 and several greatly updated versions quickly followed. The applications feature list was more advanced than its main competition, WordStar. Despite its comprehensive abilities, it gained praise for its minimalistic look of spareness. WordPerfect rapidly displaced most other systems, especially after the 4.2 release in 1986, by release 5.1 in 1989, WordPerfect had become a standard in the DOS market. At the height of its popularity, in the 1980s, it was a dominant player in the processor market, partly because of extensive, no-cost support. While best known in its DOS and Microsoft Windows versions, its popularity was based partly on its availability for a wide variety of computers. Its dominant position ended after a release for Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Word, having been tuned for some time on the Mac, was introduced at the time in a much superior version. Word rapidly took over the market, helped by aggressive bundling deals that ultimately produced Office, the common filename extension of WordPerfect document files is. wpd. Older versions of WordPerfect also used file extensions. wp. wp7. wp6. wp5. wp4, Bastian and Ashton kept the rights to the WordPerfect software they produced. The two founded Satellite Software International, Inc. of Orem, Utah, to market the program to other Data General users, WordPerfect 1.0 represented a significant departure from the previous Wang standard for word processing. The first version of WordPerfect for the IBM PC was released the day after Thanksgiving,1982 and it was sold as WordPerfect 2.20, continuing the version numbering from the Data General. Over the next months, three more minor releases arrived mainly to correct bugs. The developers had hoped to program WordPerfect in C. Most of the programming languages then available were unsuited for the job. All versions of WordPerfect up to 5.0 were written thus, in addition, WordStar was extremely slow in switching to support for subdirectories
24.
Windows 3.0
–
Windows 3.0, a graphical environment, is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, and was released on May 22,1990. It became the first widely successful version of Windows and a rival to Apple Macintosh and it was followed by Windows 3.1. Windows 3.0 originated in 1989 when David Weise and Murray Sargent independently decided to develop a protected mode Windows as an experiment and they cobbled together a rough prototype and presented it to company executives, who were impressed enough to approve it as an official project. However, this was of limited use for the home market, the MS-DOS Executive file manager/program launcher was replaced with the icon-based Program Manager and the list-based File Manager, splitting files and programs. The Control Panel, previously available as an applet, was re-modeled after the one in the classic Mac OS. It centralized system settings, including control over the scheme of the interface. A number of applications were included, such as the text editor Notepad and the word processor Write, a macro recorder, the paint program Paintbrush. Also, the earlier Reversi game was complemented with the card game Microsoft Solitaire, 256-color VGA and MCGA modes were supported for the first time. Windows 3.0 includes a Protected/Enhanced mode which allows Windows applications to use memory in a more painless manner than their DOS counterparts could. It can run in any of Real, Standard, or 386 Enhanced modes, Windows 3.0 tries to auto detect which mode to run in, although it can be forced to run in a specific mode using the switches, /r, /s and /3 respectively. Since Windows 3.0 runs in 16-bit 286 protected mode and not 32-bit 386 protected mode, however, on 32-bit CPUs, the programmer had access to larger memory pointers and so it was possible to expand program segments to whatever size was desired. Because of this, Windows 3.0 can access only 16 MB total of RAM and this was the first version to run Windows programs in protected mode, although the 386 enhanced mode kernel was an enhanced version of the protected mode kernel for Windows/286. The official system requirements for Windows 3.1 or higher Also, Windows 3.0 cannot run in full color on most 8086/88 machines, as the built-in 640×350 EGA and 640×480 VGA drivers contained Intel 80186 instructions. MCGA 320×200 and 640×480 drivers did not contain these instructions and this could be worked around by installing the Windows 2. x EGA/VGA drivers, replacing the CPU with an NEC V20/V30, or by using a modified VGA driver that supports the 8086/88. Real mode primarily existed as a way to run Windows 2. x applications and it was removed in Windows 3. 1x. Almost all applications designed for Windows 3.0 had to be run in standard or 386 enhanced modes, however, it was necessary to load Windows 3.0 in real mode to run SWAPFILE. EXE, which allowed users to change virtual memory settings. Officially, Microsoft stated that an 8Mhz turbo 8086 was the minimum CPU needed to run Windows 3.0 and it could be run on 4.77 MHz 8088 machines, but performance is so slow as to render the OS almost unusable. Up to 4 MB of EMS memory is supported in real mode, Standard mode was used most often as its requirements were more in-line with an average PC of that era — an 80286 processor with at least 1 MB of memory
25.
Graphical user interface
–
GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces, which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard. The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements, beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices, smartphones and smaller household, office and industrial controls. Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of a GUI is an important part of application programming in the area of human–computer interaction. Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for the logical design of a stored program. Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that the language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks. The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI, typically, users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to the kind of data they hold. The widgets of an interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of users. A model–view–controller allows a structure in which the interface is independent from and indirectly linked to application functions. This allows users to select or design a different skin at will, good user interface design relates to users more, and to system architecture less. Large widgets, such as windows, usually provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, smaller ones usually act as a user-input tool. A GUI may be designed for the requirements of a market as application-specific graphical user interfaces. By the 1990s, cell phones and handheld game systems also employed application specific touchscreen GUIs, newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and multimedia centers, or navigation multimedia center combinations. Sample graphical desktop environments A GUI uses a combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform that users can interact with, a series of elements conforming a visual language have evolved to represent information stored in computers. This makes it easier for people with few computer skills to work with, the most common combination of such elements in GUIs is the windows, icons, menus, pointer paradigm, especially in personal computers. The WIMP style of interaction uses a virtual device to represent the position of a pointing device, most often a mouse. Available commands are compiled together in menus, and actions are performed making gestures with the pointing device, a window manager facilitates the interactions between windows, applications, and the windowing system. The windowing system handles hardware devices such as pointing devices, graphics hardware, window managers and other software combine to simulate the desktop environment with varying degrees of realism. Smaller mobile devices such as personal assistants and smartphones typically use the WIMP elements with different unifying metaphors, due to constraints in space
26.
Microsoft
–
Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup, as of 2016, it was the worlds largest software maker by revenue, and one of the worlds most valuable companies. Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4,1975, to develop and it rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The companys 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion, in June 2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer production market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers. The word Microsoft is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion for computer programming, sought to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which offered a computer that tracked and analyzed automobile traffic data. Allen went on to pursue a degree in science at Washington State University. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systemss Altair 8800 microcomputer, Allen suggested that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device, after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didnt actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter and they officially established Microsoft on April 4,1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the name of Micro-Soft, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, the company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, however, it was MS-DOS that solidified the companys dominance. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOSs available software selection, the company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkins disease, while jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20,1985. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated, in 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office
27.
Microsoft Excel
–
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a programming language called Visual Basic for Applications. It has been a widely applied spreadsheet for these platforms, especially since version 5 in 1993. Excel forms part of Microsoft Office, Microsoft Excel has the basic features of all spreadsheets, using a grid of cells arranged in numbered rows and letter-named columns to organize data manipulations like arithmetic operations. It has a battery of supplied functions to answer statistical, engineering, in addition, it can display data as line graphs, histograms and charts, and with a very limited three-dimensional graphical display. It allows sectioning of data to view its dependencies on various factors for different perspectives, Excel was not designed to be used as a database. Microsoft allows for a number of optional command-line switches to control the manner in which Excel starts, the Windows version of Excel supports programming through Microsofts Visual Basic for Applications, which is a dialect of Visual Basic. Programming with VBA allows spreadsheet manipulation that is awkward or impossible with standard spreadsheet techniques, programmers may write code directly using the Visual Basic Editor, which includes a window for writing code, debugging code, and code module organization environment. A common and easy way to generate VBA code is by using the Macro Recorder, the Macro Recorder records actions of the user and generates VBA code in the form of a macro. These actions can then be repeated automatically by running the macro, the macros can also be linked to different trigger types like keyboard shortcuts, a command button or a graphic. The actions in the macro can be executed from these types or from the generic toolbar options. The VBA code of the macro can also be edited in the VBE, advanced users can employ user prompts to create an interactive program, or react to events such as sheets being loaded or changed. Macro Recorded code may not be compatible between Excel versions, some code that is used in Excel 2010 can not be used in Excel 2003. Making a Macro that changes the colors and making changes to other aspects of cells may not be backward compatible. User-created VBA subroutines execute these actions and operate like macros generated using the macro recorder, from its first version Excel supported end user programming of macros and user defined functions.0. Beginning with version 5.0 Excel recorded macros in VBA by default, after version 5.0 that option was discontinued. All versions of Excel, including Excel 2010 are capable of running an XLM macro, Excel supports charts, graphs, or histograms generated from specified groups of cells. The generated graphic component can either be embedded within the current sheet and these displays are dynamically updated if the content of cells change
28.
Microsoft Word
–
Microsoft Word is a word processor developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25,1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems, commercial versions of Word are licensed as a standalone product or as a component of Microsoft Office, Windows RT or the discontinued Microsoft Works suite. Microsoft Word Viewer and Office Online are freeware editions of Word with limited features, in 1981, Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi, the primary developer of Bravo, the first GUI word processor, which was developed at Xerox PARC. Simonyi started work on a word processor called Multi-Tool Word and soon hired Richard Brodie, a former Xerox intern, Microsoft announced Multi-Tool Word for Xenix and MS-DOS in 1983. Its name was simplified to Microsoft Word. Free demonstration copies of the application were bundled with the November 1983 issue of PC World and that year Microsoft demonstrated Word running on Windows. Unlike most MS-DOS programs at the time, Microsoft Word was designed to be used with a mouse and it was not initially popular, since its user interface was different from the leading word processor at the time, WordStar. However, Microsoft steadily improved the product, releasing versions 2.0 through 5.0 over the six years. In 1985, Microsoft ported Word to Mac OS and this was made easier by Word for DOS having been designed for use with high-resolution displays and laser printers, even though none were yet available to the general public. Following the precedents of LisaWrite and MacWrite, Word for Mac OS added true WYSIWYG features and it fulfilled a need for a word processor that was more capable than MacWrite. After its release, Word for Mac OSs sales were higher than its MS-DOS counterpart for at least four years, Word 3.0 included numerous internal enhancements and new features, including the first implementation of the Rich Text Format specification, but was plagued with bugs. Within a few months, Word 3.0 was superseded by a more stable Word 3.01, after MacWrite Pro was discontinued in the mid-1990s, Word for Mac OS never had any serious rivals. Word 5.1 for Mac OS, released in 1992, was a popular word processor owing to its elegance, relative ease of use. Many users say it is the best version of Word for Mac OS ever created, in 1986, an agreement between Atari and Microsoft brought Word to the Atari ST under the name Microsoft Write. The Atari ST version was a port of Word 1.05 for the Mac OS and was never updated due to the degree of software piracy on the Atari platform. The first version of Word for Windows was released in 1989, with the release of Windows 3.0 the following year, sales began to pick up and Microsoft soon became the market leader for word processors for IBM PC-compatible computers. When Microsoft became aware of the Year 2000 problem, it made Microsoft Word 5.5 for DOS available for download free, as of March 2014, it is still available for download from Microsofts web site. In 1991, Microsoft embarked on a project code-named Pyramid to completely rewrite Microsoft Word from the ground up, both the Windows and Mac OS versions would start from the same code base
29.
Atari 8-bit family
–
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 and manufactured until 1992. All of the machines in the family are similar and differ primarily in packaging. They are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU running at 1.79 MHz, star Raiders is widely considered the platforms killer app. The original Atari 400 and 800 models were released with a series of plug-n-play peripherals that used Ataris SIO serial bus system, to meet stringent FCC requirements, the early machines were completely enclosed in a solid cast aluminum block, which made them physically robust but expensive to produce. Over the following decade, the models were replaced by the XL and XE series which had the same basic logical design. The Atari 8-bit computer line sold two million units during its production run between late 1979 and mid-1985. They were not only sold through dedicated computer retailers, but department stores such as Sears, the primary competition in the worldwide market was, starting in 1982, the Commodore 64. This was the first computer to offer similar performance. Atari also found a market in Eastern Europe and had something of a renaissance in the early 1990s as these countries joined a uniting Europe. On January 1,1992, Atari corp, officially dropped all remaining support of the 8-bit line. Design of the 8-bit series of machines started at Atari as soon as the Atari 2600 games console was released in late 1977. While designing the 2600 in 1976, the team from Atari Grass Valley Research Center felt that the 2600 would have about a three-year lifespan before becoming obsolete. They started blue sky designs for a new console that would be ready to replace it around 1979, what they ended up with was essentially a greatly updated version of the 2600, fixing its more obvious limitations but sharing a similar overall design philosophy. The newer design would be faster than the 2600, have better graphics, work on the chips for the new system continued throughout 1978 and focused on much-improved video hardware known as the Color Television Interface Adaptor, or CTIA. During this gestation the home computer era began in earnest in the form of the TRS-80, Commodore PET, Warner Communications had purchased Atari from Nolan Bushnell for $28 million in 1976 in order to fund the launch of the 2600. Atari had recently sent Ray Kassar to act as the CEO of the company, Kassar felt the chipset should be used in a home computer to challenge Apple. In order to adapt the machine to this role, it would need to support character graphics, include some form of expansion for peripherals, and run the then-universal BASIC programming language. The CTIA, like the 2600s TIA, was designed to produce Player-Missile graphics, instead of expanding the CTIA to handle these tasks, the designers instead introduced an entirely new chip for this purpose, the Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller, or ANTIC
30.
Commodore PET
–
The Commodore PET is a line of home/personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. The first model, which was named the PET2001, was the personal computer ever made available to retail consumers, after the Apple II. In the 1970s Commodore was one of many companies selling calculators designed around Dallas-based Texas Instruments chips. Commodore responded to this by searching for a set they could purchase outright. At Commodore, Peddle convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were a dead-end, in September 1976 Peddle got a demonstration of Jobs and Wozniaks Apple II prototype, when Jobs was offering to sell it to Commodore, but Commodore considered Jobs offer too expensive. Tramiel demanded that Peddle, Bill Seiler, and John Feagans create a computer in time for the June 1977 Consumer Electronics Show, tramiels son, Leonard, helped design the PETSCII graphic characters and acted as quality control. The result was the first all-in-one home computer, the PET and its 6502 processor controlled the screen, keyboard, cassette tape recorders and any peripherals connected to one of the computers several expansion ports. The machine also included a built-in Datasette for data storage located on the front of the case, the data transfer rate to cassette tape was 1500 baud, but the data was recorded to tape twice for safety, giving an effective rate of 750 baud. The PET2001 was announced at the Winter CES in January 1977, however, the PET was back-ordered for months and to ease deliveries, early in 1978 Commodore decided to cancel the 4 kB version. However, this took six months to finally happen, during which time Microsoft lost money. At the end of the year, the company was saved by Apples decision to license Microsoft BASIC for the Apple II line. The key tops also tended to rub off easily, reliability was fairly poor, although that was not atypical of many early microcomputers. Because of the keyboard on the PET, external replacement ones quickly appeared. On the other hand, Commodore was a year behind Apple, in 1979, Commodore replaced the original PET2001 with an improved model known as the 2001-N. The new machine used a standard green-phosphor monitor in place of the blue in the original 2001. It now had a conventional, full-sized keyboard and no longer sported the built-in cassette recorder, the kernel ROM was upgraded to add support for Commodores newly introduced disk drive line. It was offered in 8kB, 16kB, or 32kB models as the 2001-N8, 2001-N16, the 2001-N switched to using conventional DRAM instead of the 6550 SRAM in the original model. PET 2001-8Ns had eight 2108 DRAMs and 2001-16Ns used sixteen 2108s, the PET4016 used eight 4116 chips
31.
Circular reference
–
A circular reference is a series of references where the last object references the first, resulting in a closed loop. A circular reference is not to be confused with the logical fallacy of a circular argument, sentences containing circular referents can still be meaningful, Her brother gave her a kitten, his sister thanked him for it. Is circular but not without meaning, indeed, it can be argued that self-reference is a necessary consequence of Aristotles Law of non-contradiction, a fundamental philosophical axiom. In this view, without self-reference, logic and mathematics become impossible, or at least, Circular references can appear in computer programming when one piece of code requires the result from another, but that code needs the result from the first. For example, Function A will show the time the sun last set based on the current date, Function B will calculate the date based on the number of times the moon has orbited the earth since the last time Function B was called. So, Function B asks Function C just how many times that is, Function C doesnt know, but can figure it out by calling Function A to get the time the sun last set. The entire set of functions is now worthless because none of them can return any useful information whatsoever and this leads to what is technically known as a livelock. It also appears in spreadsheets when two cells require each others result, a circular reference represents a big problem in computing. A deadlock occurs when two or more processes are waiting for another to release a resource. From the technical documentation at Microsoft, The FOREIGN KEY constraints cannot be used to create a self-referencing or circular FOREIGN KEY constraint, for Oracle and PostgreSQL the problem with updating a circular reference can be solved by defining the corresponding foreign keys as deferrable. In that case the constraint is checked at the end of the not at the time the DML statement is executed. To update a circular reference two statements can be issued in a transaction that will satisfy both references once the transaction is committed. Only inner joins are supported and are specified by a comparison of columns from different tables, a circular join is a SQL query that links three or more tables together into a circuit. Oracle uses the term Cyclic to designate a circular reference, a distinction should be made with processes containing a circular reference between those that are incomputable and those that are an iterative calculation with a final output. The latter may fail in spreadsheets not equipped to them but are nevertheless still logically valid. Catch-22 Chicken or the egg Circular reporting Halting problem Nested function Regress argument Self-reference Theres a hole in the bucket
32.
Mitch Kapor
–
In 1990 with John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and served as its chairman until 1994. Kapor has been an investor in the computing industry, and supporter of social causes, like the Hidden Genius Project, The College Bound Brotherhood. Kapor was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised on Long Island in Freeport, New York and he received a B. A. C. at the time. He began but did not complete a degree at MIT’s Sloan School of Management but later served on the faculty of the MIT Media Lab. Lotus was founded in 1982 by partners Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs with backing from Ben Rosen, Lotus first product was presentation software for the Apple II known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after leaving his post as head of development at VisiCorp, the distributors of the Visicalc spreadsheet, shortly after Kapor left Visi-Corp, he and Sachs produced an integrated spreadsheet and graphics program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp had an agreement whereby Visi-Calc was being shipped simultaneously with the PC. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3 on January 26,1983, the name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manager. In practice the two functions were less often used, but 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet program available. Jerome Want says, Under founder and CEO Mitch Kapor, Lotus was a company with few rules, Kapor decided that he was no longer suited to running a company, and he replaced himself with Jim Manzi. Kapor was extensively involved in initiatives that created the modern Internet and he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990 and served as its chairman until 1994. EFF defends civil liberties in the world and works to ensure that rights. Kapor attended the first Wikimania in 2005 and he was also founding Chair of the Commercial Internet Exchange. In 2003, Kapor became the founding Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, Kapor serves on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. In May 2009, after founder Susan P. Crawford had joined the Obama administration, in 1996, the Computer History Museum named him a Museum Fellow for his development of Lotus 1-2-3, the first major software application for the IBM PC. He founded the Mitchell Kapor Foundation to support his philanthropic interests in environmental health, as an active angel investor, Kapor participated in the initial rounds of Dropcam, Twilio, Asana, Cleanify, and Uber. In August 2015, Mitch and Freada announced they would invest $40 million over three years to accelerate their work to make the tech ecosystem more inclusive and he is married to Freada Kapor Klein and resides in Oakland and Healdsburg, California. Both served on the Board of Trustees of the Summer Science Program from 2004 to 2006 and he was a student of the program in 1966
33.
X86
–
X86 is a family of backward-compatible instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU and its Intel 8088 variant. The term x86 came into being because the names of several successors to Intels 8086 processor end in 86, many additions and extensions have been added to the x86 instruction set over the years, almost consistently with full backward compatibility. The architecture has been implemented in processors from Intel, Cyrix, AMD, VIA and many companies, there are also open implementations. In the 1980s and early 1990s, when the 8088 and 80286 were still in common use, today, however, x86 usually implies a binary compatibility also with the 32-bit instruction set of the 80386. An 8086 system, including such as 8087 and 8089. There were also terms iRMX, iSBC, and iSBX – all together under the heading Microsystem 80, however, this naming scheme was quite temporary, lasting for a few years during the early 1980s. Today, x86 is ubiquitous in both stationary and portable computers, and is also used in midrange computers, workstations, servers. A large amount of software, including operating systems such as DOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris and macOS, functions with x86-based hardware. There have been attempts, including by Intel itself, to end the market dominance of the inelegant x86 architecture designed directly from the first simple 8-bit microprocessors. Examples of this are the iAPX432, the Intel 960, Intel 860, however, the continuous refinement of x86 microarchitectures, circuitry and semiconductor manufacturing would make it hard to replace x86 in many segments. The table below lists processor models and model series implementing variations of the x86 instruction set, each line item is characterized by significantly improved or commercially successful processor microarchitecture designs. Such x86 implementations are seldom simple copies but often employ different internal microarchitectures as well as different solutions at the electronic, quite naturally, early compatible microprocessors were 16-bit, while 32-bit designs were developed much later. For the personal computer market, real quantities started to appear around 1990 with i386 and i486 compatible processors, other companies, which designed or manufactured x86 or x87 processors, include ITT Corporation, National Semiconductor, ULSI System Technology, and Weitek. Some early versions of these microprocessors had heat dissipation problems, AMD later managed to establish itself as a serious contender with the K6 set of processors, which gave way to the very successful Athlon and Opteron. There were also other contenders, such as Centaur Technology, Rise Technology, VIA Technologies energy efficient C3 and C7 processors, which were designed by the Centaur company, have been sold for many years. Centaurs newest design, the VIA Nano, is their first processor with superscalar and it was, perhaps interestingly, introduced at about the same time as Intels first in-order processor since the P5 Pentium, the Intel Atom. The instruction set architecture has twice been extended to a word size. In 1999-2003, AMD extended this 32-bit architecture to 64 bits and referred to it as x86-64 in early documents, Intel soon adopted AMDs architectural extensions under the name IA-32e, later using the name EM64T and finally using Intel 64
34.
Assembly language
–
Each assembly language is specific to a particular computer architecture. In contrast, most high-level programming languages are generally portable across multiple architectures, Assembly language may also be called symbolic machine code. Assembly language is converted into machine code by a utility program referred to as an assembler. The conversion process is referred to as assembly, or assembling the source code, Assembly time is the computational step where an assembler is run. Assembly language uses a mnemonic to represent each low-level machine instruction or opcode, typically also each architectural register, flag, depending on the architecture, these elements may also be combined for specific instructions or addressing modes using offsets or other data as well as fixed addresses. Many assemblers offer additional mechanisms to facilitate development, to control the assembly process. A macro assembler includes a facility so that assembly language text can be represented by a name. A cross assembler is an assembler that is run on a computer or operating system of a different type from the system on which the code is to run. Cross-assembling facilitates the development of programs for systems that do not have the resources to support software development, a microassembler is a program that helps prepare a microprogram, called firmware, to control the low level operation of a computer. A meta-assembler is a used in some circles for a program that accepts the syntactic and semantic description of an assembly language. An assembler program creates object code by translating combinations of mnemonics and syntax for operations and this representation typically includes an operation code as well as other control bits and data. The assembler also calculates constant expressions and resolves symbolic names for memory locations, the use of symbolic references is a key feature of assemblers, saving tedious calculations and manual address updates after program modifications. Most assemblers also include facilities for performing textual substitution – e. g. to generate common short sequences of instructions as inline. Some assemblers may also be able to some simple types of instruction set-specific optimizations. One concrete example of this may be the ubiquitous x86 assemblers from various vendors, most of them are able to perform jump-instruction replacements in any number of passes, on request. Like early programming languages such as Fortran, Algol, Cobol and Lisp, assemblers have been available since the 1950s, however, assemblers came first as they are far simpler to write than compilers for high-level languages. There may be several assemblers with different syntax for a particular CPU or instruction set architecture, despite different appearances, different syntactic forms generally generate the same numeric machine code, see further below. A single assembler may also have different modes in order to support variations in syntactic forms as well as their exact semantic interpretations, there are two types of assemblers based on how many passes through the source are needed to produce the executable program
35.
C (programming language)
–
C was originally developed by Dennis Ritchie between 1969 and 1973 at Bell Labs, and used to re-implement the Unix operating system. C has been standardized by the American National Standards Institute since 1989, C is an imperative procedural language. Therefore, C was useful for applications that had formerly been coded in assembly language. Despite its low-level capabilities, the language was designed to encourage cross-platform programming, a standards-compliant and portably written C program can be compiled for a very wide variety of computer platforms and operating systems with few changes to its source code. The language has become available on a wide range of platforms. In C, all code is contained within subroutines, which are called functions. Function parameters are passed by value. Pass-by-reference is simulated in C by explicitly passing pointer values, C program source text is free-format, using the semicolon as a statement terminator and curly braces for grouping blocks of statements. The C language also exhibits the characteristics, There is a small, fixed number of keywords, including a full set of flow of control primitives, for, if/else, while, switch. User-defined names are not distinguished from keywords by any kind of sigil, There are a large number of arithmetical and logical operators, such as +, +=, ++, &, ~, etc. More than one assignment may be performed in a single statement, function return values can be ignored when not needed. Typing is static, but weakly enforced, all data has a type, C has no define keyword, instead, a statement beginning with the name of a type is taken as a declaration. There is no function keyword, instead, a function is indicated by the parentheses of an argument list, user-defined and compound types are possible. Heterogeneous aggregate data types allow related data elements to be accessed and assigned as a unit, array indexing is a secondary notation, defined in terms of pointer arithmetic. Unlike structs, arrays are not first-class objects, they cannot be assigned or compared using single built-in operators, There is no array keyword, in use or definition, instead, square brackets indicate arrays syntactically, for example month. Enumerated types are possible with the enum keyword and they are not tagged, and are freely interconvertible with integers. Strings are not a data type, but are conventionally implemented as null-terminated arrays of characters. Low-level access to memory is possible by converting machine addresses to typed pointers
36.
Color Graphics Adapter
–
For this reason, it also became that computers first color computer display standard. Built around the Motorola MC6845 display controller, the CGA card featured several graphics, the highest display resolution of any mode was 640×200, and the highest color depth supported was 4-bit. CGA supports, 320×200 in 4 colors from a 16 color hardware palette, the 40×25 text and 320×200 graphics modes are usable with a television, and the 80×25 text and 640×200 graphics modes are intended for a monitor. Despite varying bit depths among the CGA graphics modes, CGA processes colors in its palette in four bits, in graphics modes, colors are set per-pixel, in text modes, colors are set per-character, with an independent foreground and background color for each character. These four bits are passed on unmodified to the DE-9 connector at the back of the card, leaving all color processing to the RGBI monitor connected to it. With respect to the RGBI color model described above, the monitor would use approximately the following formula to process the digital four-bit color number to analog voltages ranging from 0.0 to 1. For the composite output, these four-bit color numbers are encoded by the CGAs onboard hardware into an NTSC-compatible signal fed to the cards RCA output jack. For cost reasons, this is not done using an RGB-to-YIQ converter as called for by the NTSC standard, consequently, the hues seen are lacking in purity, notably, both cyan and yellow have a greenish tint, and color 6 again looks dark yellow instead of brown. When the CGA was introduced in 1981, IBM did not offer an RGBI monitor, instead, customers were supposed to use the RCA output with an RF modulator to connect the CGA to their television set. The IBM5153 Personal Computer Color Display would not be introduced until March 1983 and this is relevant insofar as if an application or game programmer used either one of these configurations, they will have expected color 6 to look dark yellow instead of brown. CGA offers four BIOS text modes, 40×25 characters in up to 16 colors, each character is a pattern of 8×8 dots. The effective screen resolution in this mode is 320×200 pixels, though individual pixels cannot be addressed independently, the choice of patterns for any location is thus limited to one of the 256 available characters, the patterns for which are stored in a ROM chip on the card itself. The display font in text mode is fixed and cannot be changed. The card has sufficient video RAM for eight different text pages in this mode, BIOS Modes 0 &1 select 40 column text modes. The difference between two modes can only be seen on a composite monitor, mode 0 disables the color burst. Mode 1 enables the color burst, allowing for color, Mode 0 and Mode 1 are functionally identical on RGB monitors and on later adapters that emulate CGA without supporting composite color output. 80×25 characters in up to 16 colors, each character is again an 8×8 dot pattern, in a pixel aspect ratio of 1,2.4. The effective screen resolution of this mode is 640×200 pixels, again, the pixels cannot be individually addressed
37.
IBM Monochrome Display Adapter
–
The Monochrome Display Adapter is IBMs standard video display card and computer display standard for the PC introduced in 1981. The MDA did not have any pixel-addressable graphics modes and it had only a single monochrome text mode, which could display 80 columns by 25 lines of high resolution text characters or symbols useful for drawing forms. Based on the IBM Datamasters display system, the standard IBM MDA card was equipped with four kilobytes of video memory. The MDAs high character resolution was a feature meant to facilitate business and wordprocessing use, Each character was rendered in a box of 9×14 pixels, some characters, such as the lowercase m, were rendered eight pixels across. The theoretical total screen display resolution of the MDA was 720×350 pixels and this number is arrived at through calculating character width by columns of text and character height by rows of text. However, the MDA again could not address individual pixels, it could work in text mode. The character patterns were stored in ROM on the card and the set could not be changed from the hardware code page 437. The only way to simulate graphical screen content was through ASCII art, because of the lack of pixel-addressable graphics, MDA owners could not play most graphics-based games. At least one game, IBMs One Hundred And One Monochrome Mazes, code page 437 included the standard 127 ASCII characters but also another 127 characters like the aforementioned characters for drawing forms. Some of these shapes would later show up in Unicode as box-drawing characters, the characters were also used in early PC games such as early BBS door games, or games like Castle Adventure by Kevin Bales. IBMs original MDA included a printer port, thus avoiding the need for a separate parallel interface on computers fitted with an MDA. The registers also allow the monochrome mode to be set on, yet there was no software to actually control that feature. Other boards offered MDA compatibility, although with differences on how attributes are displayed or the font used, PC Magazine reported in June 1983 that while the IBM monochrome display is absolutely beautiful for text and wonderfully easy on the eyes, but is limited to simple character graphics. Text quality on displays connected to the color/graphics adapter. is at best of medium quality and is conducive to eyestrain over the long haul, introduced in 1982, the non-IBM Hercules Graphics Card offered both an MDA compatible high resolution text mode and a monochrome graphics mode. It could address individual pixels and display a black and white picture of 720×348 pixels and this resolution was better than even the highest monochrome resolution CGA cards could offer. Thus, even without a color capability of any kind, the Hercules adapters offer of monochrome graphics without sacrificing MDA-equivalent text quality made it a desirable choice for many. Adapters exist to convert MDA into VGA for upgrading to LCD, using a GBS-8219 with the video signal and the horizontal sync and vertical sync, set to a RGB, and Sync Separate
38.
Hercules Graphics Card
–
The Hercules Graphics Card is a computer graphics controller made by Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. that combines IBMs text-only MDA display standard with a bitmapped graphics mode. This allows the HGC to offer high quality text and graphics from a single card. The HGC was very popular, and became a widely supported de facto standard on IBM PC compatibles connected to a monochrome monitor. The HGC standard was used long after more technically capable systems had entered the market, the IBM Personal Computer was launched in 1981 with the Color Graphics Adapter expansion card, and the Monochrome Display And Printer Adapter. The CGA offered two basic operating modes, 320×200 pixel low resolution or a 640x200 pixels high resolution mode, while the low-resolution mode was very comparable to 8-bit home computers of the era, the higher-resolution mode offered a fair advance, used with a suitable monitor. Since CGA was connectable to cheap composite monitors, and even to home TVs, due to a lack of color dot mask and a dedicated connection without ability to run lower resolution displays, monochrome monitors were sharper than color. The MDP also included a Centronics compatible parallel port for printers, many imitations were available, but many of them did not include the parallel port, so the video standard became known as MDA, for Monochrome Display Adapter, since MDP was not applicable. The two graphics standards were partially incompatible, most games only supported CGA, while a few extremely rare business applications only supported MDA. Since business software at the time was based, it could run on either. Most software that used any specific capabilities of either would simply check the settings for monitor type, or check the current video mode. The Hercules card was developed in 1982 by Van Suwannukul, founder of Hercules Computer Technology, the system was created by Suwannukul initially so that he could work on his doctoral thesis on an IBM PC using the Thai alphabet. It was essentially an MDA-compatible monochrome card, but through the use of third-party drivers it could also run most programs written for the CGA cards standard graphics modes. Very large numbers of imitations appeared, including generic clones at very low prices, usually without the printer port, Hercules briefly ran ads implying that use of generic clones of the Hercules card could damage the computer. Programming for the Hercules cards native graphics mode was somewhat hindered by a lack of BIOS support and standardization from IBM—after all, popular IBM PC programs at the time came with their own drivers to allow use of the Hercules graphics mode. Long after its prime, the Hercules card continued to be popular for dual-monitor setups alongside another graphics adapter, some software debuggers could take advantage of an HGC to run the main program on the color monitor and the debugger on the HGC. Later on, the multi-monitor trick became obsolete with OS-related improvements such as the introduction of GUIs for debug commands as an analogy for debug command modules. Horizontal frequency 18.425 ±0.500 kHz, Vertical frequency 50 Hz, like the IBM Monochrome Display Adapter it improved on, the Hercules Graphics Card had both a parallel printer port and a video output port. Its text mode could display 80×25 text characters and was MDA-compatible, as such, it rendered characters in a box of 9×14 pixels, of which 7×11 made out the character itself
39.
Microsoft Flight Simulator
–
Microsoft Flight Simulator is a series of flight simulator programs, marketed as video games, for the Microsoft Windows, and earlier the MS-DOS, operating systems. It is one of the longest-running, best-known and most comprehensive home flight simulator programs on the market and it was an early product in the Microsoft application portfolio and differed significantly from Microsofts other software, which was largely business-oriented. At 25 years it is the software product line for Microsoft. Bruce Artwick began the development of the Flight Simulator in 1977 and his company, subLOGIC, initially distributed it for various personal computers. In 1981, Artwick was approached by Microsofts Alan M, in 1982, Artwicks company licensed a version of Flight Simulator for the IBM PC to Microsoft, which marketed it as Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.00. In 2009 Microsoft closed down the ACES Game Studio, which was the department responsible for creating and maintaining the flight simulator series, Dovetail Games also announced the release of Flight Simulator X, Gold Edition on Steam for late 2014, named Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Steam Edition. Microsoft Flight Simulator began as a set of written by Bruce Artwick in 1976 about a 3D computer graphics program. When the magazine said that subscribers wanted to buy the program, Bruce Artwick set to work to create it. The company began selling flight simulators for several platforms, including the 8080, Altair 8800. In 1979 subLOGIC released FS1 Flight Simulator for the Apple II, in 1980, subLOGIC released a version for the TRS-80, and in 1982 they licensed an IBM PC version with CGA graphics to Microsoft, which was released as Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.00. It was unusual in that it was not a program requiring an operating system, but contained its own operating system. In the early days of less-than-100% IBM PC compatible systems, Flight Simulator and Lotus 1-2-3 were used as unofficial compatibility test software for new PC clone models. SubLOGIC continued to develop for other platforms and ported Flight Simulator II to the Apple II in 1983, the Commodore 64, MSX and Atari 800 in 1984, and to the Amiga and Atari ST in 1986. Meanwhile, Bruce Artwick left subLOGIC and founded The Bruce Artwick Organization to continue his work on subsequent Microsoft releases, Microsoft Flight Simulator reached commercial maturity with version 3.1, and went on to encompass the use of 3D graphics and graphic hardware acceleration. Microsoft continued to produce versions of the flight simulation software, adding features, such as new aircraft types. The 2000 and 2002 versions were available in Standard and Professional editions, the 2004 release marked the celebration of one hundred years of powered flight and had only one edition. Flight Simulator X, released in 2006, returned to dual versions with a Standard, the flying area encompasses planet Earth with varying degrees of detail and includes over 24,000 airports. There is a growing list of scenery representing major landmarks
40.
IBM PC compatible
–
IBM PC compatible computers are those similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, able to run the same software and support the same expansion cards as those. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones, Columbia Data Products built the first clone of the IBM personal computer by a clean room implementation of its BIOS. Early IBM PC compatibles used the computer bus as the original PC. The IBM AT compatible bus was named the Industry Standard Architecture bus by manufacturers of compatible computers. The term IBM PC compatible is now a historical description only, only the Apple Macintosh classic Mac OS and macOS kept significant market share without compatibility with the IBM personal computer, so consumers are typically identified as being a PC or Mac user. IBM decided in 1980 to market a low-cost single-user computer as quickly as possible in response to Apple Computers success in the microcomputer market. On 12 August 1981, the first IBM PC went on sale, there were three operating systems available for it. The least expensive and most popular was PC DOS made by Microsoft, in a crucial concession, IBMs agreement allowed Microsoft to sell its own version, MS-DOS, for non-IBM computers. The only component of the original PC architecture exclusive to IBM was the BIOS and this software would run on any machine using MS-DOS or PC-DOS. Software that directly addressed the hardware instead of making standard calls was faster, however, software addressing IBM PC hardware in this way would not run on MS-DOS machines with different hardware. The 808x computer marketplace rapidly excluded all machines which were not hardware-, the 640 KB barrier on conventional system memory available to MS-DOS is a legacy of that period, other non-clone machines, while subject to a limit, could exceed 640 kB. Rumors of lookalike, compatible computers, created without IBMs approval, by June 1983 PC Magazine defined PC clone as a computer accommodate the user who takes a disk home from an IBM PC, walks across the room, and plugs it into the foreign machine. Because of a shortage of IBM PCs that year, many customers purchased clones instead, Columbia Data Products produced the first computer more or less compatible to the IBM PC standard during June 1982, soon followed by Eagle Computer. Compaq announced its first IBM PC compatible in November 1982, the Compaq Portable, the Compaq was the first sewing machine-sized portable computer that was essentially 100% PC-compatible. The company could not copy the BIOS directly as a result of the decision in Apple v. Franklin. Each computer would have its own Original Equipment Manufacturer version of MS-DOS, any software written for MS-DOS would operate on any MS-DOS computer, despite variations in hardware design. This expectation seemed reasonable in the marketplace of the time. Until then Microsoft was based primarily on computer languages such as BASIC, the established small system operating software was CP/M from Digital Research which was in use both at the hobbyist level and by the more professional of those using microcomputers
41.
IBM PCjr
–
The IBM PCjr was IBMs first attempt to enter the home computer market. It was manufactured for IBM in Lewisburg, Tennessee by Teledyne, the PCjr is also the first PC compatible machine that supports page flipping for graphics operation. The fully programmable 16-color palette logic in the PCjr allows any set of colors from among the 16-color RGBI color set—the same set of colors available in CGA text modes—in each mode. That is, in graphics mode, each pixel color value can be independently mapped to any one of the 16 real RGBI colors. When the BIOS is used to set a video mode, it sets up the PCjr palette table to emulate the CGA color palette for that mode. Programs specifically written to use PCjr graphics can subsequently reprogram the palette table to use any colors desired, palette changes must be made during horizontal or vertical blanking periods of a video frame in order to avoid corrupting the display. However, the provision of a vertical retrace interrupt simplifies this, the video hardware of the PCjr is the first to offer a vertical retrace interrupt, or any raster interrupt. In general, the PCjr video hardware can do anything that a CGA can, but the design of hardware-control registers, the functions of the CGA Mode Register and Color Select Register are implemented in the VGA using different registers. The Status Register has been moved into the VGA and has significant differences. Those are the registers, the light pen registers. Alteration of other CRTC registers cannot be assumed to produce the results from the PCjr video system as from the CGA. The 6845 CRTC and the VGA together are responsible for refreshing the internal DRAM of the PCjr. Additional external DRAM, in sidecar expansion modules, is refreshed separately, not by the CRTC, the PCjrs sound is provided by a Texas Instruments SN76489 which can produce three square waves of varying amplitude and frequency along with a noise channel powered by a shift register. Only one sound source can be selected at a time, the sources cannot be mixed, IBM claimed that an average of two wait states are added, but the designers of the Tandy 1000 claimed that six was a more accurate figure. Therefore, under some circumstances the 8088 in the PCjr actually can run at the rated 4.77 MHz, for infrared wireless operation, it was powered by common AA cells. With a built-in RF modulator, the PCjr can send video and audio to a TV, the PCjr Color Display sold by IBM included an internal amplified speaker, being the only IBM monitor in the PC line to do so. Cartridge BASIC enhances the standard IBM BASIC with commands to support the new video, further reinforcing the home-friendly goal, the PCjr also introduced two ROM cartridge slots on the front of the unit, meant to load software quickly and easily. The cartridge are plugged in from the front, prompting the computer to automatically reboot, loading and saving data from cartridge software is possible via the floppy drive
42.
Expanded memory
–
In DOS memory management, expanded memory is a system of bank switching that provided additional memory to DOS programs beyond the limit of conventional memory. Expanded memory is a term for several incompatible technology variants. EEMS, a memory management standard competing with LIM EMS3. x, was developed by AST Research, Quadram and Ashton-Tate. EEMS ultimately was incorporated in LIM EMS4.0, which supported up to 32 MB of expanded memory, IBM however created its own expanded memory standard called XMA. The 8088 processor of the IBM PC and IBM PC/XT could address one Megabyte of memory and it inherited this limit from the 20-bit external address bus of the Intel 8086. Even though the IBM PC AT, introduced in 1984, used the 80286 chip that could address up to 16 MB of RAM as extended memory, the scarcity of software compatible with the 286 protected mode, meant that the market was still open for another solution. Originally, a single 64 kB window of memory, called a frame, was possible. Programs had to be written in a way to access expanded memory. The window between lower RAM and expanded RAM could be moved around to different locations within the Expanded RAM, a first attempt to use a bank switching technique was made by Tall Tree Systems with their JRAM boards, but these did not catch on. Lotus Development, Intel, and Microsoft cooperated to develop the EMS standard, the first publicly available version of EMS, version 3.0 allowed access of up to 4 MB of expanded memory. This was increased to 8 MB with version 3.2 of the specification, the final version of EMS, version 4.0 increased the maximum amount of expanded memory to 32 MB and supported additional functionality. Microsoft thought that bank switching was a necessary, but inelegant and temporary, stopgap measure, Bill Gates said of expanded memory, the companies planned to launch the standard at the Spring 1985 COMDEX, with many expansion-card and software companies announcing their support. The first public version of the EMS standard, called EMS3.0 was released in 1985, EMS3.2 used a 64 KB region in the upper 384 KB divided into four 16 KB pages which could be used to map portions of the expanded memory. In turn, EMS3.2 was improved upon by a group of three companies, AST Research, Quadram and Ashton-Tate, which created their own Enhanced EMS standard. EEMS allowed any 16 KB region in lower RAM to be mapped to expanded memory, thus, entire programs could be switched in and out of the extra RAM. EEMS also added support for two sets of mapping registers and these features were used by early DOS multitasker software such as DESQview. Released in 1987, the LIM EMS4.0 specification incorporated practically all features of EEMS, a new feature added in LIM EMS4.0 was that EMS boards could have multiple sets of page mapping registers. This allowed a form of DOS multitasking
43.
C language
–
C was originally developed by Dennis Ritchie between 1969 and 1973 at Bell Labs, and used to re-implement the Unix operating system. C has been standardized by the American National Standards Institute since 1989, C is an imperative procedural language. Therefore, C was useful for applications that had formerly been coded in assembly language. Despite its low-level capabilities, the language was designed to encourage cross-platform programming, a standards-compliant and portably written C program can be compiled for a very wide variety of computer platforms and operating systems with few changes to its source code. The language has become available on a wide range of platforms. In C, all code is contained within subroutines, which are called functions. Function parameters are passed by value. Pass-by-reference is simulated in C by explicitly passing pointer values, C program source text is free-format, using the semicolon as a statement terminator and curly braces for grouping blocks of statements. The C language also exhibits the characteristics, There is a small, fixed number of keywords, including a full set of flow of control primitives, for, if/else, while, switch. User-defined names are not distinguished from keywords by any kind of sigil, There are a large number of arithmetical and logical operators, such as +, +=, ++, &, ~, etc. More than one assignment may be performed in a single statement, function return values can be ignored when not needed. Typing is static, but weakly enforced, all data has a type, C has no define keyword, instead, a statement beginning with the name of a type is taken as a declaration. There is no function keyword, instead, a function is indicated by the parentheses of an argument list, user-defined and compound types are possible. Heterogeneous aggregate data types allow related data elements to be accessed and assigned as a unit, array indexing is a secondary notation, defined in terms of pointer arithmetic. Unlike structs, arrays are not first-class objects, they cannot be assigned or compared using single built-in operators, There is no array keyword, in use or definition, instead, square brackets indicate arrays syntactically, for example month. Enumerated types are possible with the enum keyword and they are not tagged, and are freely interconvertible with integers. Strings are not a data type, but are conventionally implemented as null-terminated arrays of characters. Low-level access to memory is possible by converting machine addresses to typed pointers
44.
Adam Osborne
–
Adam Osborne was a Thailand-born British-American author, book and software publisher, and computer designer who founded several companies in the United States and elsewhere. Osborne was known to frequent the famous Homebrew Computer Clubs meetings around 1975 and he was best known for creating the first commercially available portable computer, the Osborne 1, released in April 1981. It weighed 24.5 pounds, cost US$1795—just over half the cost of a computer from other manufacturers with comparable features—and ran the popular CP/M2.2 operating system and it was designed to fit under an airline seat. At its peak, Osborne Computer Corporation shipped 10,000 units of Osborne 1 per month and this was at a time when IBM would not bundle hardware and software with their PCs, selling separately the operating systems, monitors, and even cables for the monitor. Adam Osbornes experience in the industry gave his new company credibility. Osborne Computer Corporation advertisements compared Adam Osbornes influence on the computer market to Henry Fords influence on transportation. It is said that in 1983, Osborne bragged about two advanced new computers his company was developing and these statements destroyed consumer demand for the Osborne 1, and the resulting inventory glut forced Osborne Computer to file for bankruptcy on September 13,1983. After Osborne Computers collapse, Adam Osborne wrote a memoir of his experience, Hypergrowth, The Rise. Dvorak, which was published in 1984, Osborne was also a pioneer in the computer book field, founding a company in 1972 that specialized in easy-to-read computer manuals. By 1977, Osborne & Associates had 40 titles in its catalog, in 1979, it was bought by McGraw-Hill and continued as an imprint of McGraw-Hill, Osborne/McGraw-Hill. In 1984, Osborne founded Paperback Software International Ltd. a company specialized in inexpensive computer software. Its advertisements featured Osborne himself, arguing that if telephone companies applied the logic to their pricing as software companies. One of its products was VP-Planner, a clone of Lotus 1-2-3. In 1987, Lotus sued Paperback Software, as a result of the lawsuit, consumer confidence waned for Paperback Software, and its revenues dropped 80% by 1989, preventing the firm from getting venture capital for expansion. In February 1990, the case went to court and on June 28, Osborne stepped down from Paperback Software the same year. Paperbacks database application, VP-Info continued to sell well for more years. Adam Osborne was born to a British father and Polish mother in Thailand, all members of the family were fluent in the Tamil language, as Adam would remain until his death. His household had several full-time Indian servants and he attended Presentation Convent School in Kodaikanal until Class 6
