

A Brief History of Spreadsheets [2004] - diego
http://dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html

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gruseom
Here's a neat bit of spreadsheet history – the story of Lotus Improv (up to
1991, it seems) and Steve Jobs' role in its development:

<http://simson.net/clips/91.NW.Improv.html>

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agumonkey
There a little space between relational data modeling, live update, user
friendliness (ala webos spirit friendly). Something akin to what Improv
accomplished in his era.

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kogus
No mention of Quattro Pro.. :) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattro_Pro>

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gruseom
Wow, from this link I learned that Adam Bosworth was one of the original
programmers of Quattro Pro. Bosworth's talk on simplicity and sloppiness
(<http://adambosworth.wordpress.com/2004/11/18/iscoc04-talk/>) is one of my
favorite things in the field:

 _It is an ironic truth that those who seek to create systems which most
assume the perfectibility of humans end up building the systems which are most
soul destroying and most rigid, systems that rot from within until like great
creaking rotten oak trees they collapse on top of themselves leaving a sour
smell and decay. [...] Conversely, those systems which best take into account
the complex, frail, brilliance of human nature and build in flexibility,
checks and balances, and tolerance tend to survive beyond all hopes.

So it goes with software. That software which is flexible, simple, sloppy,
tolerant, and altogether forgiving of human foibles and weaknesses turns out
to be actually the most steel cored, able to survive and grow while that
software which is demanding, abstract, rich but systematized, turns out to
collapse in on itself in a slow and grim implosion._

He features spreadsheets as an example:

 _Consider the spreadsheet. It is a protean, sloppy, plastic, flexible medium
that is, ironically, the despair of all accountants and auditors because it is
virtually impossible to reliably understand a truly complex and rich
spreadsheet._

...but I had no idea he'd worked on one. He worked on MS Access too.

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slu
You can download the original VisiCalc executable here:
<http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm>

It runs nicely under dosemu - here in a terminal on my Ubuntu 12.04 pc:
<http://i.imgur.com/CjcYt.png>

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slu
No mention of sc <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699>

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binarycheese
No screen shots?

