Dan Bricklin

I don't know. I'm more of the mind to create a new blog post titled "Everything, reviewed" in which I review every product I've ever owned (worth mentioning), and put all my reviews there. I think you could aggregate that info, if only I had good identifiers. This is where I wish the world had URIs & Dublin Core for, ya know, everything. <sigh/> Good luck deciphering what I mean when I'm blogging. I think Rotten Tomatoes is not the site to copy here, but rather Criticker: if I can rate items and compare my ratingset to similar ratingsets, that would be valuable. It's more of a cornucopia of the commons [1], if you will, where contributing even a little will reward you epsilon (and everyone else, too). [1] http://bricklin.com/cornucopia.htm just read about this guy a la the Visicalc thread, never thought I'd use the phrase

Dan Bricklin has his own website at http://www.bricklin.com. The history section at http://www.bricklin.com/history/intro.htm has quite a bit of info on VisiCalc. It also allows you to download an executable for DOS.

If you aim to create great software that is flexible and powerful from the beginning, you'll be fine. Many businesses are still running very well on my 10 year old code and will be 10 or even 20 years from now I'm sure. Let this inspire you: http://www.bricklin.com/200yearsoftware.htm

One thing you missed about Windows is the huge amount of effort put into backwards compatibility. You can download the original VisiCalc for the 1981 IBM PC and it still runs. Note that DOS back then didn't even support directories (they were introduced in DOS version 2). http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm Raymond Chen's blog is full of fantastic stories about Windows and the amount of effort they put in to backwards compatibility. A quote: "Look at the scenario from the customer's standpoint. You bought programs X, Y and Z. You then upgraded to Windows XP. Your computer now crashes randomly, and program Z doesn't work at all. You're going to tell your friends, "Don't upgrade to Windows XP. It crashes randomly, and it's not compatible with program Z." Are you going to debug your system to determine that program X is causing the crashes, and that program Z doesn't work because it is using undocumented window messags? Of course not. You're going to return the Windows XP box for a refund. (You bought programs X, Y, and Z some months ago. The 30-day return policy no longer applies to them. The only thing you can return is Windows XP.)" Some random examples: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/06/04/148427.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/12/23/45481.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/15/55296.aspx

MS Excel was a latecomer. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet as we today know them and it was a resounding success. There weren't much concerns, there weren't really a reason to be concerned. It was not a probabilistic tool made by fascist billionaires for explicit fascist purposes exploiting the poor and destroying the environment. No. It just crunched numbers on a very accessible interface. Ps.: see http://www.bricklin.com/firstspreadsheetquestion.htm on whether VisiCalc was the first or not.

I wanted to make some counter-snark like "I'm pretty sure VisiCalc didn't have mouse support" but I wanted to fact check myself and found a delightful write-up comparing VisiCalc 18 years ahead of Excel, so I will take your side, MS takes credit for someone else's invention as usual, but inventing is only the first step to delivering product. >> "To change a cell, you move the cursor to it with the arrow keys (the original design used a mouse, but the PCs of that day did not have a mouse) and then type the new value" http://www.bricklin.com/firstspreadsheetquestion.htm

Given by just the github account, his last activity was 13 years ago; his personal website last had a post in 2018 though (http://www.bricklin.com/default.htm). He / his company made some iOS apps as well.

For Visicalc, Dan Bricklin has a few blog posts: http://www.bricklin.com/history/intro.htm For Aston-Tate's dBase app, there's this blog post about its history: https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-ashton-tate

Killer site (not a “read”) about the thing that created the term killer app. This meant, you bought the hardware because you wanted the software. At the risk of being a hypeman, I think you should take a look. Just for funsies (though I’d gladly sell you a visicalc license). It’s weird like it’s from 1999, but visicalc was even 10 years before that. I thought this page was fun: http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm

The 40 by 25 are characters, not cells :) See: http://www.bricklin.com/history/refcard5.htm

Dan Bricklin also published "Dan Bricklin's Demo Program" in the 1980s, which my team at IBM used quite a bit. It was for creating functional mockups of DOS (pre Windows) applications. We found it very useful in producing an interactive app mockup with which we could solidify agreement on requirements. He acknowledges its existence, but doesn't have artifacts from it. As I recall, the box (as software was packaged then) had a large tomato on it (his company was Software Garden). http://www.bricklin.com/softwaregarden.htm

Interestingly Dab Bricklin the creator of VisiCalc built a web based spreadsheet called SocialCalc which was then eventually evolved into EtherCalc. To download and emulate VisiCalc: http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm

To me, its a real shame he's not making more money from this, as they don't hold a patent because because at the time of invention (1979) it just wasn't common for software to be patented. He would be crazy rich otherwise. http://www.bricklin.com/patenting.htm

You can download VisiCalc from Dan Bricklin's site at http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm and run it using dosbox. Tip: a formula is something like "+A1" instead of "=A1".

Also note the inventors of VisiCalc failed to patent it for various reasons[1]. This led to quick improvements of the spreadsheet by Lotus, Borland and Microsoft. If it had been patented, it is unlikely innovation would have been so fast with VisiCalc having a monopoly. [1] http://www.bricklin.com/patenting.htm

Why Bricklin didnt patent the spreadsheet: http://www.bricklin.com/patenting.htm I think they could have patented the business method, not the code then.

And yes, it's still available to download http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm

You should probably cite something to avoid getting downvoted. e.g: http://www.bricklin.com/wontprogram.htm

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

This article seems to touch on the explanation a bit more. http://www.bricklin.com/wontprogram.htm It's not that Johnny can't program, it's just that he won't.

I was just reading this, and this paragraph struck my eye: "Bricklin and Frankston recalled that their initial efforts to promote VisiCalc did not meet universal enthusiasm. Experienced computer people weren’t bowled over, Bricklin said; they would dismiss the spreadsheet with, 'Hey, I can already do most of this in BASIC.' People who had no experience with computers tended to think that computers could do anything under the sun, and so VisiCalc didn’t wow them. 'But when the accountants saw it - there was an accountant [at a particular computer store], he started shaking - he said, ‘This is what I do all day!'" Reminds me: who are you solving the problem for? For more details, here's Bricklin's Visicalc history. http://www.bricklin.com/history/intro.htm

"... In the long term, it is unlikely that any particular ASP will survive without you needing to migrate your data to something else. ... The issue you bring up, of how do you deal with the fact that it is unlikely most ASPs will be around to maintain your data, is a good one. It should be discussed and careful attention should be paid to it. Your suggestion to go with ones that have the most partners and customers (VisiCalc's situation in its day) doesn't fit with your comparison to staying away from VisiCalc. ..." From the man (Dan Bricklin) himself ~ http://www.bricklin.com/nextvisicalc.htm

This doesn't ring true to me. I've never found any reference to VisiCalc being written in Lisp -- there's no reference to that at all in either Dan Bricklin's site or Bob Frankston's site: http://www.bricklin.com/visicalc.htm http://www.frankston.com/public/?name=implementingVisicalc In fact, I've heard stories about wrangling assembly code to make it work. Can anyone verify this?

I think the difference is that software is engineering that isn't treated like engineering. For example, if a new bridge is going to be built, years and years are spent building models, testing winds, and understanding the geography of the location. Models are tested in wind tunnels. Dampers are added for earthquakes that may or may not occur. Every truckload of concrete is tested. Metals are designed for exact specifications. When software is built, the first prototype becomes the production version. People don't think about the future. Algorithms aren't chosen they are hacked together by someone who may or may not understand the system from beginning to end. The problem with software, most times, is precisely that it is not treated as engineering. We build software to be thrown away. We don't build it to last. This article from Dan Bricklin changed my perspective on software. http://www.bricklin.com/200yearsoftware.htm He argues that we should treat software more like engineering projects and design and build it to last. Furthermore, we require civil engineers building bridges to have degrees in civil engineering. For software, anyone can create it. People who never went to college even. But you'd never allow someone with only a history degree to design a skyscraper. We've become accustomed to software written by people who are not engineers. We don't spend the same kind of money on it and the users of it don't really care, because unlike a bridge, their lives…