Interview With Spreadsheet Creator

Gammu writes "Dan Bricklin helped create one of the most successful computer metaphors of all time, and he never got rich. He, and another engineer, started Personal Software to create the computer spreadsheet VisiCalc, which established the Apple II as the standard microcomputer for small businesses and attracted the attention of IBM to the market. Josh Coventry recently interviewed Bricklin about VisiCalc and his newer projects, including a Wiki-style spreadsheet." WikiCalc was discussed back in February on Slashdot and reviewed by NewsForge in March. NewsForge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

A dollar for the poor man

[phantomcircuit]

he didn't get rich from such a famous piece of industry starting software?

lets give him a dollar

check out Numbler

[harshaw]

The source and engine are also available for Numbler, a collaborate spreadsheet similar to google spreadsheet.

you can get the source and play with it at http://code.google.com/p/numbler/ [google.com]. We haven't made a formal announcement of this yet so the docs are still quite raw.

VisiCalc Executable for the IBM PC

[bigberk]

I loved this... his web site includes a downloadable VisiCalc binary [bricklin.com] from 1981. It's 27 KB large (smaller than most web images, he points out) and it's a pretty powerful piece of software. Still runs on my modern dual core system, talk about longevity. Wow. All the Flash and Visual Basic in the world can't make me forget how awesome and elegant some older software is. I started out by writing in assembler myself

Re:It is an example of not patenting

[qwerty shrdlu]

Mr Bricklin's site also has an explaination of why VisiCalc wasn't patented: http://www.bricklin.com/patenting.htm [bricklin.com] In short, it just wasn't how things were done then, and the lawyer didn't think he could pull it off.

Apple II as the standard?

[Spiked_Three]

I'm not exactly sure how they came to that conclusion. I worked in one of the first retail home computer software stores and we had tons of customers come in and say "I need/want Visicalc. What computer should I buy?" An apple II was seldome the recomendation. We sold Atari 400/800s, apples, commodore pets and I think most of the time we recommended a TRS-80 if their needs was strictly business with Visicalc.

And we sold a ton of Visicalcs. If Dan couldn't get rich it is because he spent the profits poorley. Not because they were not there.

It is an example of the benefit of not patenting

[SgtChaireBourne]

If he had patented (which, bizarrely, is allowed for software in the US), then neither Apple's nor IBM's PCs would have taken off. The combination of Apple and Visicalc got PCs into most businesses. Later, IBM and Lotus 1-2-3 got PCs into all businesses. So as far as the PC is concerned, Visicalc was the killer app.

Visicalc led to Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus 1-2-3 became ubiquitous, though sorely needed improvements, which led to Quattro. Which was too fast and could exchange data with other spreadsheets so that was stopped by Excel and later corrected by OpenOffice.org's Calc. OOo Calc and a few others even fix some of the calculation errors that have been persistent in Excel functions across many versions and many years.

Patents here would have stifled that progression. Most likely PCs would never have become common in business and homes beyond the occasional hobbyist. Who knows where we would be without the PC revolution? Maybe not even any WWW. But who knows? Maybe it would have come 10 years later and been based around Next, though that too has been in some ways dependent on the success of the Apple ][.

Sure, "marketing" is the "dark side"...

[NotQuiteReal]

But remember, marketing (and sales) pay the bills.

Sure, engineering "innovation" is cool, but engineers are built so that once the "that's cool" flag is set, it is soon forgotten in the zen of the implementation.

Sales and marketing guys who couldn't program "hello world", jump all over the cool idea with branding, marketing, patents, and "market differentiation" and turn it into actual money.

If you are an engineer with new ideas, it would not be a bad idea to align yourself with the "dark forces", if you care about making money from your work.

I, for one, do not begrudge our road-warrior, platinum mile club, twice-divorced sales wonk his high salary, he earns it too.

disclaimer: I am not a sales or marketing type. I see that they often earn more than I, but am old enough to appreciate why.

Standard microcomputer for business

[cstec]

The original post is an Apple troll. The standard microcomputer for business from that time was the TRS-80, which was far more successful for business applications (and had a much bigger business application catalog accordingly.) Visicalc was released for both.

Re:VisiCalc Executable for the IBM PC

[timeOday]

What, 25 years of backwards compatibility only counts as cool if it's on accident? I agree a lot of credit goes to Microsoft, but also to the engineers at Intel and AMD for keeping the zombie that is x86 on its feet all those years - and outperforming everything else to boot. Legacy is a heavy burden to carry; they say Longhorn almost crushed Microsoft. But that also means that the very few companies with enough grunt to pull it off have a big competitive advantage. 25 years of Microsoft and Intel, I don't know whether to admire or resent it.

Re:VisiCalc Executable for the IBM PC

[bigberk]

Could that be true? I don't know either way. However as someone with extensive DOS assembler experience, I can say that the API calls (DOS int 0x21 and BIOS routines) that Visicalc used are very limited. This version ran on DOS 1.0 so we know it didn't even use any fancy memory management routines. The only potential for incompatibility that I see are the BIOS keyboard/video calls.

DOS emulators have to deal with far more complicated DOS applications than this one. It uses basic OS and BIOS calls, no fancy processor or hardware tricks ... in fact I think this would be a nice binary to reverse engineer and play with, very straightforward x86 assembler.

Re:It is an example of the benefit of not patentin

[Tod DeBie]

If he had patented (which, bizarrely, is allowed for software in the US), then neither Apple's nor IBM's PCs would have taken off.

He had Visicalc running on the IBM PC by 1981, he also had it on the Apple II, the PET, and the TRS-80. Dan could have elected to continue working on it himself or license other companies, such as that little outfit in Redmond. Your suggestion that a patent on Visicalc would have kept us in the stone age is absurd. He was clearly trying to run it on anything that was popular at the time. The only difference that would have been caused by a patent would be that Microsoft and Lotus (IBM) would be a bit less rich than they are today. A result most on here would probably welcome.

The point is that without patents, big companies like Microsoft can easily out muscle and out market little guys with good ideas. With patents, the little guys can win more.

Re:It is an example of not patenting

[jomama717]

Based on the Robert Kearns [wikipedia.org] intermittent wiper nightmare I think Mr. Bricklin is better off for not getting wrapped up in a spreadsheet patent fiasco. Sounds like he's doing fine financially and has been quite productive over the years.

Standard Office Libraries

[Doc Ruby]

I don't know why every desktop doesn't include a basic spreadsheet superclass, since it is so common in so many different kinds of apps. I'd expect by now that the OS would include a basic SQL storage/query engine, an app that hooks code and data objects to a 3D array, and a GUI for sheets. And a basic text editor. The original Mac was complete with those apps in 1984, even though only the patterns (not the code, certainly not the source) were available to every app. Over 20 years later, and users and developers still have to roll our own, and use inconsistent GUIs, interfaces, APIs, data models, and just plain redundant bloat.

People like Bricklin who kicked off all this "personal computing" made a lot more changes in the right direction with a lot less technology, for even fewer people, than we've done in the generation since we inherited their vision.

Re:It works like this...

[njdj]

Is organization not a talent? People skills aren't easy to master.

No, it's not; and yes, they are. I was a software developer, and became a manager. I was seen as a very good manager. I found the job pretty boring - I could do the work in about 20 hours/week (after all, the key skill is delegating as much as possible). In the end, I went back to software development, mainly because I found it more satisfying.

Of course I could have got a lot more money by working my way up the hierarchy, but not having been brought up in the USA, I don't regard accumulating/spending money as the purpose of life. I have enough money for my needs and my wife's.