5 ms·

When I saw the "first killer app" headline I immediately thought "VisiCalc". I used it ad-nauseum on a TRS-80 III as a neuroscience lab assistant in the early '

When I saw the "first killer app" headline I immediately thought "VisiCalc". I used it ad-nauseum on a TRS-80 III as a neuroscience lab assistant in the early '80s. Before I got that software I used actual paper spreadsheets, either big 17"x11" sheets, or painfully self ruled paper. After enough hours of that I carried my TRS-80 into the lab and introduced my professor to it and VisiCalc, who fell in love and bought one for the lab. If you've never spreadsheeted on paper you may not realize the glory of even the most primitive spreadsheet app. I used to use erasers until my fingers went numb or white-out by the quart. Up hill both ways. You young whippersnappers have no idea how good you have it. I sat with the prof to show him my first attempt, with a half dozen formulas in it. He looked over my shoulder and showed me that every. fucking. formula. was wrong. I felt humiliated. But we fixed them as we went, and watching the changes flow into the cells was magic. My force had been multiplied. The skills from VisiCalc have transferred to other spreadsheets over the years very well. It's amazing how much Mr. Bricklin got right. I wonder how much was his brilliance and how much was the inevitability of the design.

contingencies 7y ago
We didn't quite invent everything. We didn't invent spreadsheets, and there's actually a good lesson in that. I think the reason we didn't invent spreadsheets is that we didn't have any use for them, since we didn't do accounting. - Dr. Butler Lampson, on Xerox PARC (2016) ... via http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
dlhavema 7y ago
I think the formulas being wrong helped solidify the value, as it showed that even if something that core is wrong, it will fix it immediately without any extra rework. It would have had the same effect if only one formula was left intentionally wrong :)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
jhayward 7y ago
Bricklin didn't invent spreadsheets, they had existed for hundreds of years. He wasn't even the first to use a digital computer to implement one. He was, however, in the right place at the right time to put spreadsheets in the hands of many more people in a much more convenient and powerful form. See: http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html
- adventured 7y ago
  Bricklin invented the software spreadsheet. It's only a need to debase Bricklin's obvious credit, that leads to the claim that comparable spreadsheets existed prior to VisiCalc. They did not. That's precisely why it was such a marvel. Whatever existed prior to VisiCalc, was not similar to the spreadsheet as we know it and define it today. It's a path that VisiCalc blazed, to universal credit by everyone that was in the industry at the time and helped pioneer software.
  - jhayward 7y ago
    What, specifically, are you asserting that Bricklin invented? It wasn't the visual paradigm of a tabular presentation. It wasn't the two-formed concept of cells having both values and formulas, or that the formulas could be stated in terms of other cell's values. It wasn't that you could do what accountants had done for centuries using the same tools. It wasn't that the same type of calculations could be done using a computer. So what we're left is that he took a visual concept and implemented it on a screen. I don't think that qualifies as "invention", myself. It is re-implementation, copying, or something that doesn't involve a conceptual leap. He was in the right place at the right time to spot the technological opportunity, and we are all better for that.
  - StudyAnimal 7y ago
    LANPAR was invented in 1969, well before VisiCalc: http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html
raducu 7y ago
I've always been bad at doing hand calculations (probably my adhd); In my first course of calculus I asked my professor if he would still give me points on problems where the final answers didn't match because of calculations errors but the overall reasoning was sound. He said "well... ok, standards have gone down over the years", then he looked in the amphitheater where he had a section of chairs that had missing desks and finally said: " though I really shouldn't, because you're all engineers, and just look what engineers that make "small" errors in calculations" accomplish". Probably I could not have become an engineer 100 years ago.

contingencies 7y ago

We didn't quite invent everything. We didn't invent spreadsheets, and there's actually a good lesson in that. I think the reason we didn't invent spreadsheets is that we didn't have any use for them, since we didn't do accounting. - Dr. Butler Lampson, on Xerox PARC (2016) ... via http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

dlhavema 7y ago

I think the formulas being wrong helped solidify the value, as it showed that even if something that core is wrong, it will fix it immediately without any extra rework. It would have had the same effect if only one formula was left intentionally wrong :)

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

jhayward 7y ago

Bricklin didn't invent spreadsheets, they had existed for hundreds of years. He wasn't even the first to use a digital computer to implement one. He was, however, in the right place at the right time to put spreadsheets in the hands of many more people in a much more convenient and powerful form. See: http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html

adventured 7y ago
Bricklin invented the software spreadsheet. It's only a need to debase Bricklin's obvious credit, that leads to the claim that comparable spreadsheets existed prior to VisiCalc. They did not. That's precisely why it was such a marvel. Whatever existed prior to VisiCalc, was not similar to the spreadsheet as we know it and define it today. It's a path that VisiCalc blazed, to universal credit by everyone that was in the industry at the time and helped pioneer software.
- jhayward 7y ago
  What, specifically, are you asserting that Bricklin invented? It wasn't the visual paradigm of a tabular presentation. It wasn't the two-formed concept of cells having both values and formulas, or that the formulas could be stated in terms of other cell's values. It wasn't that you could do what accountants had done for centuries using the same tools. It wasn't that the same type of calculations could be done using a computer. So what we're left is that he took a visual concept and implemented it on a screen. I don't think that qualifies as "invention", myself. It is re-implementation, copying, or something that doesn't involve a conceptual leap. He was in the right place at the right time to spot the technological opportunity, and we are all better for that.
- StudyAnimal 7y ago
  LANPAR was invented in 1969, well before VisiCalc: http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html http://www.dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html

raducu 7y ago

I've always been bad at doing hand calculations (probably my adhd); In my first course of calculus I asked my professor if he would still give me points on problems where the final answers didn't match because of calculations errors but the overall reasoning was sound. He said "well... ok, standards have gone down over the years", then he looked in the amphitheater where he had a section of chairs that had missing desks and finally said: " though I really shouldn't, because you're all engineers, and just look what engineers that make "small" errors in calculations" accomplish". Probably I could not have become an engineer 100 years ago.