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VisiCalc Turns 25, Creators Interviewed
Xaroth writes "It's hard to believe that it's already been 25 years since the release of one of the world's first 'killer apps.' 1979 saw the creation of VisiCalc, the first microcomputer-based spreadsheet and the single application that launched widespread computer use among businesses.
To remember this event, PC World has published portions of interviews with the three co-creators of the modern spreadsheet: Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, and Dan Fylstra. Alternately, check out the Software History website for more information on this and other historical bits."
Um, ye$.
The question is, would they have patented it?
Don't forget DB Master for the Apple II. Sold several million copies - a modernized version of it is still used in public works offices around the world, even 20 years later.
The original author still does DB work for this company.
I dont think the article mentioned this, but VisiCalc was also the first (known) enterprise app to be ported from the Apple OS to a *Nix based system.
Natural Selection: self-destruction of the poor and lazy
Well, not necessarily Visicalc specifically (Sheesh, it's an ancient program!), but spreadsheets in general.
jEdit, through its pluggable Java architecture allows the addition of user-created plug ins. One of these is the double bookkeeping plug in.
Every accountant to whom I introduced this to (it's free as in gratis and libre) has told me how much more productive they are using this set up than using plain old spreadsheets.
Basically, the goal of computing is to mimic and make easier real-life processes. The spreadsheet has no real-life corollary, whereas Java and specifically the Object Oriented paradigm model the real world to a T.
So if we want to congratulate Visicalc for anything, let's give them a big thanks for setting computers down a dead end road for 25 years.
I remember watching something about the early days of PC's and there was an interview with one of Visicalc's creators and he discussed the first time he showed it to an accountant.
The accountant supposedly started visibly shaking and proclaimed "Do you realize just how much time this will save me??"
I just found that bit interesting for all the people who hold onto "the good old days" and question if computers have really helped or hindered us.
In my mind I try to imagine just where we would be if we still only had large main frames. The power of the PC is truely amazing.
(sorry just got back from a workout and am high on endorphines (or whatever they are))
-- taking over the world, we are.
I think that community is coming back. With the Web, blogs, e-mail, and cell phones, we're seeing a resurgence in community. Technology is now something for bringing people together.
Visiclac kicked off ebusiness, email gave us instant global communications, mobile phones let us do that on the move, whats next?
Do you need a website upgrade?
Boy, if they would have, it would have stopped alot of the anticompetitive business practices that's happened in the 25 years since, they could have locked out execl before it even happened.
Some time ago there was the question raised concerning ownership and transfer of patents, etc. of the spreadsheet, which everyone and his kid brother eventually made their own version of. IIRC the creators didn't feel they actually sold all rights or something to that effect (sound similar to the SCO/Linux debacle?) Anyone know what has been determined in that regard? Seems if it was still unresolved it would make SCO/Linux look like a tempest in a teapot by comparison.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I didn't even realize it until I saw tihs article, but my first programming gig was with Visicalc...
It was 1982, I was 13, and a guy paid me $50 to create a spreadsheet for him that would let him calculate his cost per share of some stock he was buying over multiple purchases (dollar cost averaging).
Bricklin and Frankston did some innovating work in (the quite stable) VisiCalc... not to be outdone, in 1982 Microsoft released Multiplan 1.0 which was a pioneer in some, shall we say, more infamous terms. It was a revenue bomb, and it's miscalculations cost customers umpteen $$. I remember hearing somewhere that the legal threats due to Multiplan almost shut down Microsoft's early operations.
Apparently, rumor was that SCO was hired to port Multiplan (to various *nix's I would guess).
Anyway, it's interesting that one of Microsoft's first attempt to unseat a software application was targeted at Visicalc. Did they succeed?
Sigs cause cancer.
Because you are probably a sysadmin with a degree from DeVry and don't understand that notation, I'll explain it simply: O(1) means "really fast".
<CS101>
If we are being educational, lets do it right. O(1) does not mean really fast. A calculation that takes 6 years could still be O(1). O(1) simply means the calculation is constant, regardless of what is input. O(n) basically means the more data (n) you give it, the longer it takes. And you can take it from there (double it, square it, take a log, whatever floats your boat). One thing to keep in mind is that the more complex you get to speed things up and get closer to an O(1), the more likely you are to take longer for the simple calculations than a basic O(n) formula. Or to put it another way, all of us that want to do a quick sum of columns of a small table would prefer not to wait 10 minutes while the kitchen sink and travelling salesman algorithms load.
</CS101>
Yes, the amount of time spent doing financial reports has pretty much stayed the same. But the ability to create scenarios, to play "what if" games, has led to much better financial information being available to corporate planners.
It's like many other situations: You'll pay for as much information as you can get, rather than just get the same information more cheaply.
Lotus Improv certainly sounds like something truly nifty (Google for it, there are a handful of articles about it on the web besides the one cited above). Which reminds me of Lotus Agenda, another reportedly supercool application that you can only read about today.
I wonder how many other revolutionary applications Lotus developed and later buried?
Heard an interesting story about the Lotus development of macros. They were a debugging tool that was in a close to final release for testing before someone realized these might be a useful feature in the final product.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I'll bet you a million dollars that there's at least one company, or even more likely a government agency, that still uses VisiCalc because they never had the motivation to update all their data.
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
Sure they'd patent it. They considered doing it 25 years ago, but an unimaginative lawyer told them that software wasn't patentable. More here.