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Implementing VisiCalc

Posted by timothy on from the gnumeric's-great-grand-daddy dept.

David Leppik writes "The author of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, has an article about how it was designed. VisiCalc is why businesses started to take the Apple ][ (and personal computers in general) seriously. It also changed accounting forecasts forever, which triggered the investment boom that brought us the "greed is good" era. Oh, and you can still download VisiCalc in case you run DOS or Windows and have 27,520 bytes to spare."

26 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. hell yeah by jonnyfivealive · · Score: 1, Funny

    now i can run it on just my 286 and not my beowulf cluster of 8086's

    --
    i sell illegal drugs
  2. Oh So He is to blame... by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 4, Funny
    I remember a realator telling me that the real-estate market didn't go loony until the creation of the spreadsheet.

    Before that all real-estate transactions needed to make sense on the back of an envelope.

    How many of you have run into dumb decisions by management that looked good in the spreadsheet?

    --
    "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
    --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  3. Weird Al props... by H0NGK0NGPH00EY · · Score: 4, Funny

    Uh, uh, loggin' in now
    Wanna run wit my crew, hah?
    Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?
    They call me the king of the spreadsheets
    Got em all printed out on my bedsheets
    My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
    But it was obsolete before I opened the box
    You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
    Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique!
    Your laptop is a month old? Well, that's great
    If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight.

    --
    Do not read this sig.
  4. Rock On! by Limburgher · · Score: 4, Funny
    Now all I need is Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and I'll be all set.

    What's that?

    It's WHAT century?

    Shit. Oh well. No Cholera for me. . .

    --

    You are not the customer.

    1. Re:Rock On! by Schnapple · · Score: 3, Funny
      The Oregon Trail

      Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (along with the rest of the series).

      Need anything else?

      --

      Schnapple

  5. sweet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Finally, a free as in beer Excel drop-in! Bye, bye, Office 2k!

  6. Leave this running by sirsampson · · Score: 4, Funny

    Set this running full screen on your machine and scare people away...

  7. Easter Egg? by charlieo88 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Okay, I downloaded it. Now how do I get to the flight simulator?

  8. Wait just a gol-dang minute. . . by Limburgher · · Score: 3, Funny

    This won't open my Excel spreadsheets! Clearly inferior software. . .;)P

    --

    You are not the customer.

  9. yes I've 28k HD space but RAM requirements? by rlthomps-1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've only got 640k, I was told that's all I'd ever need.

    1. Re:yes I've 28k HD space but RAM requirements? by GigsVT · · Score: 3, Funny

      You have expanded memory right? I hope you didn't waste money on XMS RAM, that stuff is a dead end technology. EMS is the way of the future.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  10. VisiCalc Trivia by jratcliffe · · Score: 4, Funny

    There's a nice little plaque at Harvard Biz School, in the classroom where Dan Bricklin first developed the VisiCalc idea (Aldrich 108). He came to my Managing Product Development class while I was at HBS, really cool guy. Tells a great story about doing a calculation in a very roundabout way, and then getting asked by the professor in class the next day "right answer, but why didn't you just use a ratio?" Dan said "well, this way will be more accurate." Truth of the matter was, he hadn't gotten the divide function working yet. :)

  11. VisiCalc by TheWickedKingJeremy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh, and you can still download VisiCalc in case you run DOS or Windows and have 27,520 bytes to spare.

    Oh yeah, let me just go ahead and break out my extra 50 gig hard drive I just happen to have sittin... did you say bytes?

    --

    my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
  12. Re:um... by ralico · · Score: 2, Funny

    So VisiCalc added speed to greed, eh?

    --

    SCO to Hell
  13. code whore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    >B7:"Priceless
    >A7:"Never making a dime
    >B5:11000
    >A5:"Two Apple ]['s
    >B4:2000
    >A4:"Junk-food for programmers
    >B3:50000
    >A3:"Two Programers
    >A1:"Visi Calc: /W1 /GOC /GRA /GC9 /X>A1:>B7:

  14. Re:you can't beowulf outside of Linux by tx_mgm · · Score: 4, Funny

    90 minutes of cassette tape for one kilobyte of data

    good christ! what, did it record the voice of someone saying "one...zero....zero....one...one...one..." or what?

    --
    Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
    -Dr. Weird
  15. Re:you can't beowulf outside of Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    good christ! what, did it record the voice of someone saying "one...zero....zero....one...one...one..." or what?

    by my calculations, if you speak a one or zero about every 2/3 of a second (a slightly quick but very comfortable and understandable pace), 1024 kilobytes will take 90 minutes.

    jesus christ. technology used to SUCK.

  16. Re:I'm glad I was too young to use that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ha! You obviously haven't used Linux before. Using Linux is exactly like using VisiCalc. Klunky, retarted interface with cryptic commands and config files spread across the universe. As an added bonus, you get Penguinites and GPL zealots... Anti-Capitalist idealouges who have never had a real job in their lives and like things like butterflies and mountain biking.

  17. Re:I'm glad I was too young to use that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    like things like butterflies

    Excuse me Mr. Troll, but I believe it's Microsoft users who apparently adore butterflies

  18. Re:I'm glad I was too young to use that by Paladine97 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actually, running VisiCalc back then is very similar to running a Java program in a 2.0 Ghz machine with 512 MB memory.

    They both run at the same speed!

  19. Re:Mac OS X? by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm running it on MacOS X. I do have virtual PC however.

    --
    Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
  20. I wan't my Number Munchers back! by Znonymous+Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ch00t, ch00t!

    ][ in middle east!

    --

    Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.

  21. Re:Something like that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    killer app for linux?

    xbill

  22. Re:Old, but stil used. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    To you original poster.
    Your fathers data is contained within 2-4k of data. We VB programmers can take it apart and use such advanced VB programming we can replicate your original spreadsheet to a 4-8+ MB file. It is trivial, but we may need 4-18 weeks to get it going. It will have some graphs too. Please upgrade to an OLE2 compliant system in the meantime. Do not use Apple because we don't know or like that shit. Get a big monitor too.

    Thank you for your time.

    A fellow VB programmer.

  23. Re:you can't beowulf outside of Linux by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Funny

    [cassette tape for one kilobyte] good christ! what, did it record the voice of someone saying "one...zero....zero....one...one...one..." or what?

    Actually it was something like "high beep, low beep, low beep, high beep, high beep, high beep..."

    (Forget about speaking Klingon, real geeks learn Modem-ese.)

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  24. Eureka! by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    I once invented spreadsheet software for Enron, it was called InvisiCalc.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.