ahhh, fasttracker. my best friend made albums and albums of "dope industrial" with that in the 90s... I had the cassette tapes in my car. I watched him on it a lot. He was the only one of us who didn't play guitar or bass or keyboards (he was a drummer). I'd say that was a very sophisticated piece of software, small on size though it was, not comparable to a demoscene demo in any way. But iirc the keyboard shortcuts were as complicated as vim.

For me, Fasttracker II still remains the most nostalgic, intuitive, immersive DAW ever made. Aslo, one of the best thought-out pieces of software in general.

I wrote so many tracks on it, some of which played on local FM radio and in clubs. Fondest memories circa 1996-2001.

Only many years later, Ableton managed to create another DAW that got close to FT in spirit, which is don't impede the creative flow. A DAW written by actual musicians for musicians (hail Robert Henke aka Monolake!).

And recently, Bitwig pulled another stunt and married Ableton Live's simplicity with feature richness more typical of a heavyweight DAW league, without all the inherent clutter.

P.S. This seemingly turned into some kind of advertisement, but it's just gratitude from a devoted user :)

Fasttracker was coded by demoscene people though, namely members of the group Triton (later Starbreeze Studios). It has a couple of demoeffects in its about screen, and even a version of Nibbles (qbasic snake game) you can play.

And if you think Fasttracker is complicated, wait till you try Protracker...