John Socha - Norton Commander

Norton Commander

I started work on what became known as the Norton Commander in the fall of 1984 while I was still a graduate student in Applied Physics at Cornell University. The first versions were entirely in assembly language, but that was too time-consuming, so I soon switched to a blend of C and assembly language at a time when most "real programmers" wouldn't touch C.

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At the time I called it Visual DOS, with the abbreviation of VDOS instead of the usual two-letter abbreviations used at the time. The program itself was inspired by several things coming together. I had a contract to write some books for Microsoft Press and actually spent some time in Bellevue, WA working on-site. I'd take two months off from graduate school and write a book.

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The second book was to be a book of small utility programs like I used to write for Softalk Magazine (such as whereis, scrnsave, etc.), but I never finished writing the book because one small utility took on a life of its own.

— John Socha described his work on NC

John Socha continued work on his VDOS program after joining Peter Norton Computing as their first director of research and development. In 1986 the software product was released under the name of Norton Commander.

Socha also led the development team of Norton Utilities for the Macintosh computer platform.

John has written a number of technical books published under the Peter Norton name, including the best-selling Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book (ISBN 0-13-661901-0).