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Domain: softwarehistory.org

Stories and comments across the archive that link to softwarehistory.org.

Comments · 6

  1. Re:A serious reply, but even shorter... by BruceCage · · Score: 1 · on Bill Gates's Last Speech
    Ignoring the rest of your post.

    but in the end the spreadsheet was based off of lotus 123 older than both. Lotus 1-2-3 was a successor of VisiCalc which itself was originally released in 1979, 4 years before Lotus 1-2-3. But even Dan Bricklin (co-creator of VisiCalc) states "The special thing about VisiCalc was not that it was the first row/column tabulation program. There were many such programs of various sorts prior to VisiCalc." and concluding "It was the combination of many things including its "programming by example" user interface and its influence on others that made VisiCalc special."

    See Bricklin's Was VisiCalc the "first" spreadsheet?. Here's an account of somebody old enough to actually have used VisiCalc at the time. And while I'm at it be sure to check out the Computer History Museum's Software Industry Special Interest Group's Overview of the History of the Software Industry.

  2. softwarehistory.org has a much better list by Jrod5000+at+RPI · · Score: 4, Informative · on Tim Bray's Top Twenty Software People in the World

    This list purposely doesn't include technology-du-jour and instead focuses on those whose ideas have had long-standing impact. http://www.softwarehistory.org/history/important_p eople.html Reading about all the exciting things these people have accomplished is really motivating.

  3. Re:"Free software" more significant by tuffy · · Score: 1 · on From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog
    The software industry was well entrenched even without Bill's help. Plus, one ALWAYS pays. Except for people who are working on "commercial" OSS, what do these programmers working on "other" OSS projects do to pay the bills. The vast majority of them write software that costs money. A "free" software market can't support itself, it is way to resource intensive. It has to be buoyed by something.

    That "something" was typically hardware sales, software comissioned from software houses by customers or by in-house programming staff. And, to this day, that's where the majority of programming salaries come from. Eventually, customers accepted the notion that off-the-shelf software could do the job. But with the advent of off-the-shelf desktop PCs, the industry has successfully put forth the notion that off-the-shelf software is the only thing capable of doing the job on the desktop side of things.

    Programmers will always get paid to solve problems, but the idea that customers can't see the source code and find their own solutions is a more recent, but obviously successful, development in the industry.

  4. Re:"Free software" more significant by tuffy · · Score: 5, Insightful · on From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog
    Singular apps like VisiCalc, WordStar, Lotus 123, dBase, Windows, PhotoShop et al helped to create what the software industry is now, which in turn has helped to create an environment in which open software could even exist.

    Before there was a software industry, software was effectively free from hardware manufacturers. And, one typically received the source code along with it. Only with the unbundling and charging for software did a seperate industry for it come about - eventually necessitating the creation of an "open source" movement. So, in a sense, open software has existed before the industry itself. But Bill Gates and the industry has become entrenched to the point that the notion of software one doesn't have to pay for seems novel.

  5. how about... by NemoX · · Score: 2, Interesting · on Top Ten Software Innovators?

    The folowing has some people: softwarehistory important people

    Also, Ada Lovelase (Byron) assited Charles Babbage. How about: John von Newmann ("von Newmann architecture"), John Backus (FORTRAN), Niklaus Writh (Pascal), Dan Bricklin/Bob Frankston (first spreadsheet - VisiCalc),

    IMO, Bill Gates is not an inovator, he is a buisiness man who invented nothing that wasn't already on the market in the 80's.

  6. Another cool history site... by mistah_monkey · · Score: 1 · on Computer Historian?
    Is The Software History Project

    Hey! My dad's in there!!