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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."
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You haven't got the slightest idea what you are talking about.
Visicalc may have been a breakthrough for its time, but also keep in mind that computers back then were about as powerful as our solar calculators are today.
Visicalc simply can't compare, feature for feature, speed to speed, and accuracy to accuracy.
Featurewise, even the lowly Gnumeric offers more functionality than Visicalc ever did. Excel provides so much more functionality as well as user-expandability through macros and VBA than Visicalc authors could ever have imagined.
Speedwise, today's spreadsheets have the benefit of years of development, so things like the calculation engine have been fine tuned to the point of executing commands almost instantaneously. Even difficult problems like the travelling salesman or Towers of Hanoi have been solved and added to the calculation engine. This kind of feature adding essentially reduces the calculation time of these problems to a O(1) table lookup. 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".
As for accuracy, keep in mind that computers back when Visicalc were written were not the 32 or 64 bit machines we have today. People were lucky if they had 16 bits and quite content with 8 bit CPUs. If we consider that a signed 16 bit integer can only handle values between -16k through 16k, it becomes obvious that Visicalc simply couldn't handle the types of calculations that we are performing today (32 bits allows us values of +-2 trillion).
Visicalc is to Excel what an ant is to a Bugatti.
Featurewise, even the lowly Gnumeric offers more functionality than Visicalc ever did
Jesus Christ! Visicalc sucks!