The span is deliberate. Smalltalk-80 had an editor, a compiler, a debugger and a class browser running inside a single bitmapped window at Xerox PARC by 1980. Turbo Pascal put a compiler, an editor and a runtime on one floppy disk for $49.95 in 1983. Visual Basic made the form the primary artefact of development in 1991, and Borland Delphi followed in February 1995 with a component library shipped as source. Those four moments are the subject.
Thirty pieces are arranged in six rooms, by environment and era rather than by idea. Green Screens holds the first shared windows and the two editors of 1976. The Blue Box is the Borland decade. Form Designers covers the visual designer and what it changed about who could build software. The Inventions takes the capabilities one at a time — syntax highlighting, the breakpoint, completion, refactoring, the protocol. The Builders is the people. On the Shelf is what came after, and the institutions and licences behind it.
Figures that will go stale carry their date inside the sentence. Prices and versions are given as they were announced, which is why a product appears here with a release date and an argument rather than a current version number.
Every piece is reachable without a menu: the sections page lists the six rooms, and the archive lists all thirty pieces in one flat list.