A magazine about programmers, code, and society. Written by and for humans since 2018.
July 6th, 2026
Welcome to the 94th issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Killer Apps. In this edition, Graham argues that the "Killer App" phenomenon is in danger of extinction; Adrian enumerates some examples of "App Killers"; in our Vidéothèque section, we watch the moment Dan Bricklin told his team about the release of the first IBM PC in 1981; and in the Library section, we review "Using ARexx on the Amiga" by Chris Zamara & Nick Sullivan.
by Graham Lee
I have more experience with situations where apps have already done the killing, than I have with being onboard with a killer app. I never used VisiCalc, for example, joining the spreadsheet revolution long after the field was already overfull with competitors (I certainly used some similar spreadsheet on the Dragon 32, but really got going with MiniOffice on the Amiga). People who ran the UK academic ISP JANET tell me that the X window system (originally on VMS) was the killer app for the Internet Protocol, and led to their implementing that over the favoured X.25 protocol, but I did not connect a computer to JANET until 2000, long after IPv4 had won out. I did use Deluxe Paint on the Amiga, but long after Andy Warhol had done the same and after other platforms had similar packages.
by Adrian Kosmaczewski
The name "Killer App" says a lot about the level of violence in the world of business (well, in the world in general). Such a piece of software is dubbed a "killer" if it somehow triggers a massive uptick in the adoption of its underlying platform, at such levels that would be otherwise impossible to imagine without the app leading the charge. The scale and sheer levels of capital injected into the software industry in the past 50 years have brought quite a few examples of such "Killer Apps." But what about the "App Killer," that is, those with the opposite effect? Well, it turns out there are quite a few examples of those, too.
Archival footage from the early 1980s has this distinct, almost palpable texture to it. For members of Generation X, it brings memories of Donkey Kong, He-Man, and Star Wars. The colors are slightly washed out, the audio hums with the analog hiss of magnetic tape, and the people on screen seem entirely unaware that they are standing at the edge of technological history. This is particularly true of this month's Vidéothèque entry: there is an added, inescapable layer to the viewing experience: the absolute, crushing weight of dramatic irony. Brace for impact.
The mid-1980s was the era when the personal computing vendors ended their war on themselves. In the belligerent phase, every time a vendor released a new computer, it was incompatible with everything that came before it. In "Where Are The Killer Apps?", I showed that Commodore VIC-20 software does not run on the Commodore 64, or any other computer made by the same company or another company. The same was true for Apple: try running Apple 1 software on an Apple ][, Apple ///, Lisa, or Macintosh (or these days, try to run Macintosh software from a decade ago on a Macintosh); of Sinclair: you cannot run ZX80 software on a ZX81, Spectrum, or QL; and Tandy/Radio Shack: you cannot run TRS-80 Model I software on a TRS-80 Model II, on a TRS-80 Color Computer, or a Model 100.
