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Interview With Spreadsheet Creator
Gammu writes "Dan Bricklin helped create one of the most successful computer metaphors of all time, and he never got rich. He, and another engineer, started Personal Software to create the computer spreadsheet VisiCalc, which established the Apple II as the standard microcomputer for small businesses and attracted the attention of IBM to the market. Josh Coventry recently interviewed Bricklin about VisiCalc and his newer projects, including a Wiki-style spreadsheet." WikiCalc was discussed back in February on Slashdot and reviewed by NewsForge in March. NewsForge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
he didn't get rich from such a famous piece of industry starting software?
lets give him a dollar
first post
Not that I'm a big proponent of certifications, but Apple has not taken any steps to get their machines certified for military or government usage. This means that it is not acceptable for certain tasks which require that certification.
By not being on the government's approved vendor list, they are unable to translate those consumers into customers, and this in turn leads to a natural resistance to their product in other non-governmental businesses.
It's funny to think that once Apple was the choice of small businesses everywhere, but today it's the choice of a small band of fanatics instead. Despite their involvement in educational computing, Apple has been laid by the wayside by Microsoft and its business/government-centered approach to the market.
The source and engine are also available for Numbler, a collaborate spreadsheet similar to google spreadsheet.
you can get the source and play with it at http://code.google.com/p/numbler/. We haven't made a formal announcement of this yet so the docs are still quite raw.
Is this another example of Microsoft screwing the little guy?
It is very easy to replicate a spreadsheet program. The only effective protection is a patent.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I loved this... his web site includes a downloadable VisiCalc binary from 1981. It's 27 KB large (smaller than most web images, he points out) and it's a pretty powerful piece of software. Still runs on my modern dual core system, talk about longevity. Wow. All the Flash and Visual Basic in the world can't make me forget how awesome and elegant some older software is. I started out by writing in assembler myself
What? A techie guy with no business sense? Unheard of...
Esta es una firma en Espanol.
I only wish good ideas and good engineering had more to do with making a fortune than they do. Don't get me wrong, it does happen, and perhaps more in the US than anywhere else. But still, most of the money normally goes to whoever already has enough money to advance the innovator a paycheck so they can develop the idea. (Of course engineering wage slavery still beats pushing a plow 9 times out of 10!)
vc.com to get it without a license. Beware that this isn't really for the PC; it's for MSDOS. Most people will need dosemu or something like that, to be able to run it.
I really think this addresses a growing need, particularly amongst corporate intranet users. We use a Wiki (MediaWiki) internally at work, and there are so many times that we need to create a simple editable spreadsheet to display calculations on a web page. Right now we either use static tables or attach an Excel document (I tried Google Spreadsheets but didn't like the results for our needs). This is fine, but creates formula messes when people want to make changes. WikiCalc appears to solve our need, although the video makes it look a little complex for the novice user (hopefully it looks this way because Dan Bricklin is trying to impress us nerds).
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
"Can you have someone add a few extra rows to my excel as i have ran out of rows? thx"
He should pattent this idea of a spread sheet and use it against microsoft if they ever use thier pattents against anyone else. It wouldn't exactly be getting rich but it could open the door for those who are getting rich to get a lot less rich.
Maybe some poen source guys should talk to him about it. Lets see, a pattent "for a software program that charts different items in an easy to use and understandable format at the users can edit or create on thier own and asign formulas for different functions not limited to but including linking to other documents, adding subracting, multiplying or other math and a number of other stuff"
That should lock about everyone else out of the picture if they wanted.
I'm not exactly sure how they came to that conclusion. I worked in one of the first retail home computer software stores and we had tons of customers come in and say "I need/want Visicalc. What computer should I buy?" An apple II was seldome the recomendation. We sold Atari 400/800s, apples, commodore pets and I think most of the time we recommended a TRS-80 if their needs was strictly business with Visicalc.
And we sold a ton of Visicalcs. If Dan couldn't get rich it is because he spent the profits poorley. Not because they were not there.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
If he had patented (which, bizarrely, is allowed for software in the US), then neither Apple's nor IBM's PCs would have taken off. The combination of Apple and Visicalc got PCs into most businesses. Later, IBM and Lotus 1-2-3 got PCs into all businesses. So as far as the PC is concerned, Visicalc was the killer app.
Visicalc led to Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus 1-2-3 became ubiquitous, though sorely needed improvements, which led to Quattro. Which was too fast and could exchange data with other spreadsheets so that was stopped by Excel and later corrected by OpenOffice.org's Calc. OOo Calc and a few others even fix some of the calculation errors that have been persistent in Excel functions across many versions and many years.
Patents here would have stifled that progression. Most likely PCs would never have become common in business and homes beyond the occasional hobbyist. Who knows where we would be without the PC revolution? Maybe not even any WWW. But who knows? Maybe it would have come 10 years later and been based around Next, though that too has been in some ways dependent on the success of the Apple ][.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
OK, OK, it was a great invention, but STOP for your own good!
...are we scared yet?
Sure, engineering "innovation" is cool, but engineers are built so that once the "that's cool" flag is set, it is soon forgotten in the zen of the implementation.
Sales and marketing guys who couldn't program "hello world", jump all over the cool idea with branding, marketing, patents, and "market differentiation" and turn it into actual money.
If you are an engineer with new ideas, it would not be a bad idea to align yourself with the "dark forces", if you care about making money from your work.
I, for one, do not begrudge our road-warrior, platinum mile club, twice-divorced sales wonk his high salary, he earns it too.
disclaimer: I am not a sales or marketing type. I see that they often earn more than I, but am old enough to appreciate why.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
People who have talent don't get rich.
People who organize talent get rich.
Since most of us on slashdot are havers, rather than organizers, we sense this as some sort of deep injustice, or dark irony. But really it's just a practical necessity. The organizers are the ones with the power to determine who gets paid what, so they naturally pay themselves the most. If you want that money, then become an organizer instead.
The original post is an Apple troll. The standard microcomputer for business from that time was the TRS-80, which was far more successful for business applications (and had a much bigger business application catalog accordingly.) Visicalc was released for both.
I doubt anyone is using a spreadsheet because it is "cool". They're easy to use and often exactly what's needed for a job.
Do you have any alternatives then, that do what you can do with spreadsheets, only easier, faster and better?
You guys used to rag on this guy a whole lot, but now that this "Zonk" chraracter has joined the crew, he don't look too bad, does he? ;-)
Hi I worked as an intern on your second product after visi-calc, or at least they told me it was your companies second product. Why do you feel it wasn't as successful? It fills a neat gap between spreadheets and having to write code. Most people who write serious spreadsheets for financial or scientific purposes would actually be better off in a lot of cases using it instead. for those of you not in the know, its currently being developed by uts software.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The point is that without patents, big companies like Microsoft can easily out muscle and out market little guys with good ideas. With patents, the little guys can win more.
"How is this relevant to the article?"
Relevancy:
-The article is only relevant _because_ of the person; -without the person, this article wouldn't "be itself"..
##-The "genious-versus-organizer" relevata, that people try to enrichen this post with, is relevant to the person, because of the person's already-made choices, and (what apparently is) the person's current monitary status..
##
..Modding this down is relevant to Slashdot, however; this bottom-disclaimer is _not_ (kinly) relevant to "..I'm probably gonna get modded down for this, but.."
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
I don't know why every desktop doesn't include a basic spreadsheet superclass, since it is so common in so many different kinds of apps. I'd expect by now that the OS would include a basic SQL storage/query engine, an app that hooks code and data objects to a 3D array, and a GUI for sheets. And a basic text editor. The original Mac was complete with those apps in 1984, even though only the patterns (not the code, certainly not the source) were available to every app. Over 20 years later, and users and developers still have to roll our own, and use inconsistent GUIs, interfaces, APIs, data models, and just plain redundant bloat.
People like Bricklin who kicked off all this "personal computing" made a lot more changes in the right direction with a lot less technology, for even fewer people, than we've done in the generation since we inherited their vision.
--
make install -not war
I worked at a plumbing supply house about 10yrs ago. My boss would still use his Apple II and Visicalc for doing the pricing book sheets. He had newer machines but for some reason just kept using it. I recall thinking how odd that it was the original spreadsheet software.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
From the license agreement page that everyone reads (I'm sure) before downloading it:
Onoes! You mean if I install this program I can no longer use my... um... paper ledger? (Really, what else would I have upgraded from?)
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Real Men used Paperclip
back in the day we didnt have no old school
a twist with Dan Fylstra, founder etc. of VisiCorp. Dan f**ked up and didn't settle the dispute, the result being that the court found in favor of Bricklin (or his company, which name I forget)and VisiCorp was enjoined from selling VisiCalc. Oops! Forgot that VisiCalc was Visicorp's main cash cow....so...VisiCorp crashed and burned, and Bricklin didn't get rich. Lots of hard-earned lessons for all of us.
If he'd really wanted a patent he could have likely got one.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
...and the GUI, developed at Xerox's PARC, I believe. I read somewhere that Jobs was 'inspired' by seeing these there at a visit he paid once, used it in his products and the rest is history. Was the researcher who developed them paid and credited for this? I can imagine it must have taken a lot of work (creative and otherwise) to have come up with such out-of-the-box concepts at the time...what a way to go.
The marketplace. The reason for x86 compatibility is that consumers don't want to trade in old software. Even OS/2 had a dos box (called the Penalty Box by those who tried to use it). x86 compatibility held back 32 bit computing for a decade.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
That, ladies and gentleman, is part of the reason why Windows continues to dominate but also the reason why it's increasing lagging behind other operating systems in security, new features, etc. Backward compatibility is a good thing to a certain extent but I think it's become to large a weight around Microsoft's neck. Five years for Vista? Five years and all of the best features were long ago taken out. You've got to be kidding me.
When I started reading “VisiCalc is one of the applications Microsoft uses as a baseline”, I immediately thought “well, that explains a lot.” You can imagine my let-down as I kept reading.
Why bother.
The point is that without patents, big companies like Microsoft can easily out muscle and out market little guys with good ideas. With patents, the little guys can win more.
That's the theory. The reality is that until patents deal with multiple, independent simultaneous invention, inventions whose time has come and the complete obviousness that is the average software patent, you're simply wrong.
Patents are a tool that can be used both by big and by small players. And since big players have more financial resources, i.e. lawyers, they can use the tool more and will continue to dominate.
Not to mention the idiocy of thinking that a small government department is capable of acting as a gatekeeper on all of technology, and of trying to legally define "innovative" and "new" on all of technology.
---
Patent proponents: When all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Lotus 123 was the VisiCalc killer, not Excel.
Lotus integrated three applications- spreadsheet, graphs and a relational database. I remember lots of marketing hype.
MicroSoft eventually delivered The Office site with several more intergrations including email and slideshows. They were the first to effectively use a graphical GUI, roundabout via their Macintosh software. The Excel ancestor was called Multiplan then.
Besides, even if you are right, the worst case is that we might all still be using our TRS-80s. Would that be so bad?
And a great product it is! I hear that they even let you try the software for free, and have a web-enabled version available...
The interview would have been more interesting if the reporter had thought to ask if Bricklin had been inspired by tabular analysis programs such as Omnitab dating back to the 1960s. An article from 1967 (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0373-1138(1967)3 5%3A2%3C203%3AOACPFS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0) reviewing Omnitab mentions an even older program from 1957.
...because the USA is the only country with greedy people residing in it's borders. Get a grip. Just curious, what EU country are you from?
Those who put up the money. They generally get the rewards. If you are able to get financial backing and are smart and things break your way, you should get rewards to. But if I do amazing things for my company, we already have an arrangement. They get my labor for a salary.
That's a long way around the barn to say: reward comes with risk.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Don't forget: the idea of the spreadsheet has an analog equivalent. Big companies would actually draw spreadsheets on huge blackboards for planning purposes, and there would be rules and formulas for how different 'cells' calculated based on other 'cells' on the blackboard.
It was not a novel idea, he just computerized it.
Not quite. They wouldn't draw "spreadsheets" on the blackboard; a spreadsheet was a portable alternative to a blackboard.
A "spread-sheet" was just a great big sheet of grid paper; often several feet wide. Each column was labeled with letters and each row as labeled with numbers. The sheet was folded careful along the columns to indicate sections of interest; and then "spread" out to show whatever section that the boss wanted to see.
Since it was a sheet that you spread out, it got the boring name of "spread-sheet". Accountants used to use them a lot prior to computers; I helped my Dad fold them when I was a boy. Typically, you might use each column for a different scenario forcast calculations: worst case, average case, best case scenario, etc.
The electronic version was considered better than the paper version because it would automatically re-calculate formulas in seconds, making forecasting very easy. It also was faster and more convenient to work with (no more folding and unfolding pages), and otherwise, very similar to what accountants used already. In other words, it was backwards compatibility (with paper spreadsheets) that made electronic spreadsheets such a "killer app".
was a very good program. I haven't messed around with gnumeric much, but they claim to have the fastest engine around. Open office is a nice suite, but memory requirments easily taxes older hardware.
If you're interested, Dan Bricklin was interviewed on NerdTV back in November of 2005. See episode #10.
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
How many solid gold toilets can you crap into at once?
I think Jobs believes his own bull shit. Which is a terrible fate. That way lies madness.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Though I can understand why people get paid to say or write that, I find it difficult to accept that anyone actually believes that. It doesn't work that way even in theory:
Maybe just maybe Bricklin could have gotten the concept of electronic spreadsheet accepted by the USPTO. But getting there to the initial product, he would have tread on dozens of patents utilized countless algorithms and concepts from Computer Science curricula and industry best practices which are owned by portfolio companies. They would have eaten his lunch even with cross licensing.
Here's a quote from your leader around 1994:
'nuff said.Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
this is simple
test sig