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Ask HN: What software has made you go "wow?"

2 points by schtog ↗ HN
What software has really impressed you, which has made you realy think, "wow such an elegant solution!" or "wow how did they do that!?" etc? Can be any piece of software(games, webapps, dekstop adds, languages, everything)

some on my list:

  * Diablo (Blizzard's game...)
  * Firefox 3
  * First contact with Linux
  * Emacs
  * Python
  * YouTube (yes I'd gladly pay a monthly fee)
  * Wikipedia
  * Erlang (not so much the language but the philosophy)

4 comments

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jsmcgd
I watched the E3 preview of Half Life 2 again and again and again. So probably Half Life 2.
listic
Second Reality, in particular, the Mandelbrot fractal zooming part. Realtime Mandelbrot zooming, in 1993, on a 486 - this really made me go "wow", if you know what I mean. Then it was that Globe zooming thing in 3DMark, don't remember which one - it should impress casual observe more, but I was not so impresed - I know that modern 3D card and CPU should be able to handle it. Afterwards, it was Google Earth that made me go this kind of "wow"