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Implementing VisiCalc
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."
It also changed accounting forecasts forever, which triggered the investment boom that brought us the "greed is good" era.
I highly doubt that this one application started an era of "greed is good." People have always been greedy, this just let them be greedying is a slighly more sucessful manner.
Perhaps no one if when VisiCalc came out a unix machine wasn't an ungodly sum of money.
I actually wish a lot of schools would just buy older Apple II's and then use eBay as a source for programs. I run these programs through emulation on my iMac and they really are perfect for the purpose.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
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.
The real estate boom also was juiced by an incredible inflation of the late 70's that pushed people into hard assets and away from financial assets. Gold and silver and real estate benefitted from the inflationary environment.
In addition, the Roth tax cuts in the early eighties cut depreciation periods for buildings to absurdly low levels. Enormous tax benefits were derived from owning real estate (depreciating an entire building's value in 15 years, for instance). In addition, when inflation was brought under control, interest rates declined, pushing real estate even more as cheap money chased investments. Sort of like today. Throw in the S&Ls gambling with federally insured money, and you had additional fuel for the fire.
Changes in the tax law and economic reality caught up in the latter part of the eighties. Real estate was a gigantic fricking mess in the late eighties and early nineties. It is showing signs of heating up again, IMHO.
The realtor was utterly wrong about the cause of the real estate bubble of the early/mid eighties. Visicalc may have correlated with the bubble, but it didn't cause it.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Software copy protection schemes can be though of like so: they are a tradeoff between convenience and protection. The more you protect, the less convenient it is. Essentially, when you pick a software protections scheme at a given moment in time, assuming you didn't pick an out-of-date one, you are planting your flag on what RATE of piracy you want to allow given the alternative about pissing off your customers.
however (and this is the big however), as time goes on, the FRONTIER grows due to technological improvement. As contributing technologies, such as the internet, encryption, bioscanning, and so forth increase, a software vendor can increasingly gain protection without increasing inconvenience, and so forth. Yes, there's no doubt that a parallel port dongle today would be unpopular.
What is undisputable, however, is that windowsXP's online activation mechanism has done oodles to reduce the rate of piracy of that product. (note: _reduce_the_rate_, not _eliminate_. people who still insist on thinking that the anti-piracy game is one of absolutes are mostly delusional sysadmins trying to pretend that they know something about larger technology issues).
The chestnut that "the more things change, the more they stay the same" is basically an oversimplification suitable only for History Channel caliber minds.
Many schools are dirt poor and happy to have what ever they can get. Some can barely afford PAPER, and the teachers end up buying some out of their own pocket so they can teach.
Our children are the future and our most valued possession.. yet we treat their education like a 'irritant ' and wont get involved or support it..
Plus don't forget, fundamentals don't change... and fundamentals are important, regardless of what some people/educators believe these days.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Current software in general is so over bloated we don't use but a small percentage of its features..
VisiCalc ( and many other older applications )still does more then many people would ever need.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I assert that if Windows XP piracy is down, it is due to the general acceptance that Windows 2000 has become a mature and reliable operating system that meets most needs, thus dissuading people from switching to Windows XP.
Some evidence would make your point far more effectively than the ad hominem attack you instead chose to use.
Not that the CD Key system completely eliminates piracy, but it's just generally accepted that you have to buy the game now.
Not that I read .nfo files mind you...
Schnapple
How many of you have run into dumb decisions by management that looked good in the spreadsheet?
I was in NYC at the time, temping my way through college in a variety of office jobs. The first wave of spreadsheet-aware MBAs came out and thought everything could be charted on a spreadsheet.
What I noticed was that all kinds of wacky log forms started proliferating in the workplace. Workers were supposed to use these forms to log just about everything they did, even if it didn't make sense.
Me: "But I don't know what Percent Complete this project is!"
Them: "Just make your best estimate, we need the data"
The MBAs were also into TQM and various assorted management theories (remember the Japanese management fad?) They thought everything should be made quantitative. They had a new hammer (spreadsheet) so every problem was now turned into a nail.
We need that for Linux.
Not just Windows-like apps.
Not just a killer app.
We need a killer app that Windows does NOT have.
Then we'll see Windows machines on desktops _and_ Linux side by side.
It's hard to get by these days without knowing at least a little bit about how to use a PC.
Well, you're right about that, but it misses the point. The educational value of a computer does not, for the most part, lie in learning how to use the computer for its own sake. A computer is a general purpose information tool and one goal in owning a computer is education. Education can include reading, writing, math, science, social studies, etc. A computer can, to an extent, help with all of those subjects.
Note that an Apple ][ will help you just as much with your math as a PC, as long as the software on each is roughly equivalent.
I do get tired of hearing about school districts that just dropped $250,000 for a brand new computer lab, and then they turn around and lay off teachers then complain about the student:teacher ratio. It doesn't make sense to do that when you consider that they really don't even need the lab.
The above probably set you to thinking about how inadequate an Apple would be to learn computer science subjects. You would be right to an extent, but a lab really sees far more uses than just for computer science education. If the goal is to best serve the majority of the student body, then buying your computer equipment (and by extension the education software) around the needs of your computer science oriented students is a poor choice.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
besides me
try to read
this article
in Mozilla
on an
800x600
display?
Very tedious
indeed.
Sorry. This post is admittedly lame, but I am working off the frustration of trying to read an otherwise rather interesting piece. I feel better now.
They were foolishly measuring the wrong things. You can track the progress of a project but you cannot absolutely quantify it.
Managers who don't know any better demand "best-guess" estimates, then use those inherently false estimates to create hard deadlines and make promises to higher-ups. Then they wonder why everything goes to shit.
Or if you're not, you're totally off base. Those were the days when programming was really fun, man! I remember being really excited when the PalmPilot came out, cuz it sounded like a good opportunity to get back to programming the way folks were meant to do it.
Who's with me??
Breakfast served all day!
And all young programmers should be made to sit an exam based on this.
:
:-) )
With concepts like
"VisiCalc was a product, not a program"
"The goal was to give the user a conceptual model which was unsurprising -- it was called the principle of least surprise. We were illusionists synthesizing an experience."
"One guiding principle was to always have functioning code. It was the scaffolding and all I needed to do was flesh it out. Or not. Since the program held together omitting a feature was a choice and it gave us flexibility"
and from the section on 'kidding'
"I doubt if any but the most geeky users were even aware that there was an issue let alone a solution. This is the kind of design detail that makes a program feel good even if you don't know why."
I've tried to tell several younger coders things like this on many occassions, and getting the message through can be hard work !
This article shows not only why these principles are important, but how to approach projects overall. Someone should carve it in stone (then hit newbie programmers over the head with it until it sinks in
-- You can't give it, you can't even buy it, and you just don't get it!
Promise a late delivery date, and verily, the manager shall not bug you whilst you are trying to work. Thus you deliver far sooner than if you give an accurate delivery date.
By following this strategy you will become known as a self-motivated, self-starter who consistently delivers ahead of schedule.
Additionally, your manager will never find himself with his nuts in the fire because of you, and will thus give you more 'manager support' when you need it. (read: performance review).
Good luck! I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
What's funny is that he knows he is really screwed if that disk fails - you can't copy it because of the 8-sector format
Actually you can copy it. You just need a "bit copier". I know because I did it way back in `82.
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &