David A. Wheeler

:For the inventor of the subroutine and co-inventor of the Burrows-Wheeler transform, see David Wheeler.

Most Important Software Innovations

In 2001, Wheeler made a list of the most important software concepts developed until that date. His list consists of:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• 1837: Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine
• 1845: Boolean algebra
• 1936-37: Turing machine
• 1945: Stored program concept
• 1945: Hypertext
• 1951: Subroutines
• 1952: Assemblers
• 1952: Compilers
• 1954: Practically Compiling Human-like Notation (FORTRAN programming language)
• 1955: Stack Principle
• 1957: Timesharing
• 1958-60: List Processing (LISP programming language)
• 1960: Survivable Packet-Switching Networks
• 1964: Word processor (the IBM MT/ST)
• 1964: Computer mouse
• 1965: Semaphores
• 1965: Hierarchical directories, program names as commands (Multics)
• 1965: Unification
• 1966: Structured programming
• 1966: Spell checker
• 1967: Object oriented programming
• 1967: Separating Text Content from Format
• 1968: The graphical user interface (GUI)
• 1968: Regular Expressions
• 1969-70: Standardized Generic Markup Language (SGML)
• 1970: Relational Model and Algebra (leading to relational databases)
• 1970: Distributed Network Email
• 1972: Modularity criteria
• 1972: Screen-Oriented Word processing
• 1972: Pipes
• 1972: B-Tree
• 1972, 1976: Portable operating systems (OS6, Unix)
• 1972: Internetworking using Datagrams (TCP/IP)
• 1973: Font generation algorithms
• 1974: Monitor
• 1975: Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP)
• 1977: Diffie-Hellman Security Algorithm
• 1978: RSA security algorithm
• 1978: Spreadsheet
• 1978: Lamport clocks
• 1979: Distributed Newsgroups (USENET)
• 1980: Model View Controller (MVC)
• 1981?: Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
• 1984: Distributing Naming (DNS)
• 1986: Lockless version management (CVS)
• 1989: Distributed Hypertext via Simple Mechanisms (World Wide Web)
• 1991: Design patterns
• 1992: Secure Mobile Code (Java programming language and Safe-Tcl)
• 1993: Refactoring
• 1994: Web-crawling search engines