6 ms·

Spreadsheet Wars (1988) [video]

54 points by kamphey 6y ago

kruxigt 6y ago
Amazing how little has changed. Higher res screens with more colours. Where do all the other processor cycles go?
- petepete 6y ago
  And then brand new tools like VisiData appear and everything feels like it's gone full circle. https://www.visidata.org/ https://www.visidata.org/
- retrac 6y ago
  Don't underestimate just how many cycles ended up sucked into higher resolution screens with more colours. There might well be more integer calculations going on to render a single screen of text from vector fonts onto a 4K display, than from an hour of VisiCalc running away on an 8086.
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  Convenience and usability, mostly — for the user as well as the developer. Both as users and developers, we’re able to do so much more with less effort on the computers of today. If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to try to get a little work done on an old 286 sometime.
  - bernardv 6y ago
    It’s all relative though. Back in the early/mid ‘80s, the ability to produce a single computer-generated chart out of a table of numbers was mind-blowing! Being able to print it on your new sleek dot-matrix printer was the icing on the cake! I.e. expectations were very different back in the land of the 286.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Massively larger spreadsheets, higher-precision values, but for the most part, I'd bet it's not cycles that are so interesting--modern Excel is probably surprisingly happy at 12 MHz 99% of the time. Memory and binary size is where the real bloat is.
sunny075 6y ago
That's Jared Taylor at 11:45 ???
daveslash 6y ago
"anyone can buy paint, but does that make you a painter? No." ~ I'm stealing this....
aimor 6y ago
On a whim I looked to see where everyone was now and Jared Taylor's wiki page really stood out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Taylor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Taylor
bernardv 6y ago
Quattro really was a great spreadsheet product at the time. As a student, it was the only affordable one as far as I can remember. On the PC, this was still a time (mid ‘80s) when most folks were using DOS and Windows 3.x wasn’t yet a common environment.
scottmcdot 6y ago
I'd never heard of Gary Kildall so I naively searched for him on LinkedIn, couldn't find him thinking that he was the academic type that chooses not to use it. Then sadly saw that Google search showed he passed away in 1994.

54 points by kamphey 6y ago

kruxigt 6y ago

Amazing how little has changed. Higher res screens with more colours. Where do all the other processor cycles go?

petepete 6y ago
And then brand new tools like VisiData appear and everything feels like it's gone full circle. https://www.visidata.org/ https://www.visidata.org/
retrac 6y ago
Don't underestimate just how many cycles ended up sucked into higher resolution screens with more colours. There might well be more integer calculations going on to render a single screen of text from vector fonts onto a 4K display, than from an hour of VisiCalc running away on an 8086.
TimTheTinker 6y ago
Convenience and usability, mostly — for the user as well as the developer. Both as users and developers, we’re able to do so much more with less effort on the computers of today. If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to try to get a little work done on an old 286 sometime.
- bernardv 6y ago
  It’s all relative though. Back in the early/mid ‘80s, the ability to produce a single computer-generated chart out of a table of numbers was mind-blowing! Being able to print it on your new sleek dot-matrix printer was the icing on the cake! I.e. expectations were very different back in the land of the 286.
dehrmann 6y ago
Massively larger spreadsheets, higher-precision values, but for the most part, I'd bet it's not cycles that are so interesting--modern Excel is probably surprisingly happy at 12 MHz 99% of the time. Memory and binary size is where the real bloat is.

sunny075 6y ago

That's Jared Taylor at 11:45 ???

daveslash 6y ago

"anyone can buy paint, but does that make you a painter? No." ~ I'm stealing this....

aimor 6y ago

On a whim I looked to see where everyone was now and Jared Taylor's wiki page really stood out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Taylor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Taylor

bernardv 6y ago

Quattro really was a great spreadsheet product at the time. As a student, it was the only affordable one as far as I can remember. On the PC, this was still a time (mid ‘80s) when most folks were using DOS and Windows 3.x wasn’t yet a common environment.

scottmcdot 6y ago

I'd never heard of Gary Kildall so I naively searched for him on LinkedIn, couldn't find him thinking that he was the academic type that chooses not to use it. Then sadly saw that Google search showed he passed away in 1994.