Slashdot Mirror
End of an Era: After a 30 Year Run, IBM Drops Support For Lotus 1-2-3
klubar writes Although it has been fading for years, the final death knell came recently for the iconic Lotus 1-2-3. In many ways, Lotus 1-2-3 launched the PC era (and ensured the Apple II success), and once was a serious competitor for Excel (and prior to that Multiplan and VisiCalc). Although I doubt if anyone is creating new Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, I'm sure there are spreadsheets still being used who trace their origin to Lotus 1-2-3, and even Office 2013 still has some functions and key compatibility with Lotus 1-2-3. Oh, how far the mighty have fallen.
Ok, that I know of Lotus was never on Apple... wasn't that Visicalc?
Anyways... when I was a kid, my father brought home a Commodore Vic20 and said "Son! This is the future!" and told me to figure out how to plug it into the TV. I'll not lie... to me it was a video game machine for years. The command line reminded me of exploring some cave... the directories different tunnels, etc... I was a kid.
But as the computers got better and I eventually found myself on an Apple IIe and a Compaq PC it got more interesting. And what finally made me realize what computers could do was when my dad brought home copies of Lotus and Visicalc. I would sit for hours making spreadsheets with formulas in pale monochrome ASCII. You could change something in one cell and watch all the other cells change in response. Prior to that I had no idea what programming even was... or how variables and functions worked. Those first spreadsheets are what made it all real to me. I thought it was amazing. I put my famillies finances on it. I budgeted my allowance. I made rudimentary war games. Really, Lotus (because I always liked the PC better) is what finally made me realize computers were important, and it was something I wanted to do.
Thanks Lotus!
No, Mod GP -1 inaccurate. Lotus 1-2-3 never ran on the Apple ][ family. It ran on the PC from the get-go. It was launched in 1983, not 1982.
Lotus bought VisiCalc in 1985, not 1986.
Excel didn't come out until 1985 (not 1984), and it was never ported to DOS. Its first appearance on a PC was as a Windows version in 1987. It came with a run-time version of Windows if you didn't already have Windows. Excel managed to kill Lotus 1-2-3 primarily because it was born as a GUI app and was native GUI all the way through. Lotus 1-2-3 stumbled on its way to the GUI, which allowed Excel to eventually overtake it.
Program Intellivision!