Alan Kay was quoted several years ago to the effect that there had been only three new things in software in the preceding 20 years (effectively the lifespan of PCs). One of them was Spreadsheets.
Does anyone remember the other two?
(EDIT: Who is Alan Kay (a few may ask.) His work at Xerox Parc arguably did more to shape our current software paradigm than any other influence.)
I will try to remember what I said, but neither of the answers above is correct (every one of them was done in the 60s and 70s before the commercialization of PCs in the 80s.
However, we could start all over and try to think of new inventions in computing since the 1980s.
Best wishes,
Alan Kay
No mention of spreadsheets, but how about this quote, from an interview with a 1991 issue of Byte Magazine:
"In 1968 I saw two or three things that changed my whole notion of computing. …Doug Englebart’s view [was] that the mainframe was like a railroad, owned by an institution that decided what you could do and when you could do it. Englebart was trying to be like Henry Ford. A personal computer as it was thought of in the sixties was like an automobile. In 1968 I saw Symour Papert’s first work with kids and LOGO, and I saw the first really great handwriting-character-recognition system at Rand… And that had a huge influence on me because it had an intimate feel. When I combined that with the idea that kids had to use it, the concept of a computer became something much more like a supermedium. Something more like superpaper."
When ever I think about xerox parc I always remember this quote from triumph of the nerds by steve jobs:
They showed me, really, three things, but I was so blinded by the first one that I didn’t really ”see” the other two. One of the things they showed me was object-oriented programming. They showed me that, but I didn’t even “see” that. The other one they showed me was really a networked computer system. They had over 100 Alto computers all networked, using e-mail, etc., etc. I didn’t even “see” that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me, which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I had ever seen in my life. Now, remember it was very flawed. What we saw was incomplete. They had done a bunch of things wrong, but we didn’t know that at the time. Still, though, the germ of the idea was there, and they had done it very well. And within ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this, someday.
I am pretty sure C++ wasn't one of the two things.
See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-quotes#58810
Perhaps this link leading to the paper
The Most Important Software Innovations written by David A. Wheeler
helps you remembering the two missing things.
P.S.: I personally would choose (1980 and later):
Alan Kay invented Smalltalk. In so doing, he can be said to have invented object oriented programming, although there are important precursors to Smalltalk in that regard.
Simula, a language form the 1960s for writing simulations was one. another was Planner, a language invented by Carl Hewitt of MIT. Alan Kay specifically gives credit to Hewitt for influencing him while he was at Xerox PARC.