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Lotus was my introduction to “programming”. It opened my eyes to what a computer could do. I don’t think it was turing complete and certainly wasn’t intended to
by jdsully 7y ago
Lotus was my introduction to “programming”. It opened my eyes to what a computer could do. I don’t think it was turing complete and certainly wasn’t intended to be. But spreadsheets are the one program that exposes the power of these wonderful machines to the average person.
- mycall 7y agoI thought you could do loops in macros, which is part of being turing complete.
- stan_rogers 7y agoNope. The first Lotus macro/formula language version that allowed loops was in Notes and Domino 6. Before that, you needed to use Lotusscript (a dialect of Basic similar to Visual Basic for Applications) or a C API to loop, and that came along with Windows versions and OLE.
- sagebird 7y agoLotus 1-2-3 had for loops from the beginning, version one even, far before notes, domino, lotusscript, Windows or OLE/DDE existed. Here is a manual for version two, page 126 describes the {for} loop. This wasn’t some hidden feature, lotus macro language was essential to its success from the beginning and was widely used for automating batch processing. https://www.scribd.com/doc/117872648/Lotus-1-2-3-v2-3-Functions-and-Macros-Guide https://www.scribd.com/doc/117872648/Lotus-1-2-3-v2-3-Functi...
- agumonkey 7y agoDataflow/reactive is also one the most addictive model. I'm sure everybody loves when a spreadsheet refreshes everything. I know that's a trait I ran after all my life. Including my love for dag based CGI tools and to a point, lisp repls.