[HN Gopher] VisiCalc on the Apple II
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VisiCalc on the Apple II
Author : hggh
Score : 87 points
Date : 2025-10-19 07:24 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (stonetools.ghost.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (stonetools.ghost.io)
| WillAdams wrote:
| One of my most vivid memories from youth is of the accountant who
| pulled up to a computer store I was hanging out in and announced
| to the clerk:
|
| >I want a Visicalc.
|
| After explaining that he would need a computer to run it and that
| the guy did not yet own one, the clerk then proceeded to put
| together a purchase which was not quite one (or more! Dual-Disk
| Drive setup) of every Apple product in the store, incl. a 132
| column printer and an 80 col. display.
|
| After ringing it up (for which the guy wrote out a check), I was
| enlisted to help load things into his black Trans Am and he drove
| off into the sunset.
|
| The thing which most clearly echoed that after was using Lotus
| Improv on a NeXT Cube --- these days, I either use Google Docs,
| or pyspread --- really wish Flexisheet would compile under
| GNUstep or that there was some nice, elegant, multi-dimensional
| spreadsheet option with a clear, easy-to-understand formula pane
| (which was the big advantage of Improv --- all formulae were
| gathered in one place).
| spankibalt wrote:
| > Lotus Improv
|
| A story that's not complete without _Javelin (Plus)_ [1], a
| similar program with more longevity, and popularity in its
| particular niche, but much less fame.
|
| 1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_Software]
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, ages ago, when doing the composition for an
| encyclopedia I pointed out its omission, but unfortunately,
| things were too far along for it to be added.
|
| Almost mentioned that I can't get anyone to buy me a license
| for Quantrix Financial Modeler either, but that felt a bit
| on-the-nose.
| NoSalt wrote:
| Black TransAm, you say??? "Smokey and the Bandit IV: The Bandit
| Does Your Taxes"
| bayouborne wrote:
| It's hard to over-estimate the tectonic impact the idea of
| spreadsheet had on the microcomputer scene at the time.
| Overnight 'programming' came to the masses. Someone with a
| problem (almost any kind of problem, scientific, financial,
| statistical, etc) could sit down, and easily start describing
| sequential flow, numerical manipulation and a ton of other
| things. It was the second coming of the International Business
| Machine.
| bombcar wrote:
| The spreadsheet _literally_ changed how business was run, and
| arguably a bunch of financial advances after it were directly
| _because_ of it.
|
| Being able to see values recalculated instantly was
| _earthshattering_ in a way that even the Internet really wasn
| 't.
| WalterBright wrote:
| So much opportunity I missed.
| sehugg wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if instead of struggling with office suites,
| I'd be better off running VisiCalc in an emulator. Low memory
| usage, high portability, and you know they're not going to change
| the UI on you.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Or just an earlier version of Excel.
| sehugg wrote:
| I guess whichever has the most parseable format and plays
| nice with virtual printer drivers. And when sharing a
| spreadsheet with someone, you can share the entire
| spreadsheet application software, no incompatibilities :)
| rjsw wrote:
| Software optimized for early model Macintosh computers runs
| well on later ones.
|
| WriteNow on a Quadra 950 is very fast, I don't have a
| spreadsheet application from the same era.
| krazykringle wrote:
| Consider 'sc' - dates from 1981, still actively maintained.
|
| https://github.com/n-t-roff/sc (active fork)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc_(spreadsheet_calculator)
|
| https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/resolute/en/man1/sc-im....
|
| Installable on mac and unix as 'sc-im'
| II2II wrote:
| It depends upon your needs, but the over simplified answer is:
| probably not.
|
| I'm not talking about the over all design philosophy behind
| such old software. It may be better for getting things done in
| terms of the interface and, as you mentioned, there's high
| portability. By portability, I assume you mean you can run it
| on anything that has an emulator for it.
|
| The trouble is how tied to the hardware it was. For example: 80
| column mode was limited to particular video cards, and support
| didn't include the 80 column support found on later Apple II's.
| Have extra memory (such as an emulated 128 kB Apple IIe, so
| again were talking about very common hardware)? Well, you're
| stuck to the 64 kB (or less) of an Apple II or II+. Given that
| you have to restart the program to reclaim unused memory, this
| may be a bigger deal than anticipated.
|
| Such old software is finicky. Even Lotus 1-2-3 on a PC emulator
| would have its quirks, albeit not to the same extreme.
| BirAdam wrote:
| If you're interested in the history of VisiCalc:
|
| https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-killer-app
| pinewurst wrote:
| http://www.bricklin.com/history/intro.htm
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| In the summer of 1981, I was a high school student who had been
| programming in BASIC for three years. I got a summer job at a
| company to write some utility programs in BASIC on an Apple II.
|
| One program tracked all the land leasing they did, including
| location, date of expiration, number of square feet, cost/sqft.
| Once that was done I did some other programs. I went off to
| college and brought the program listings (in dot matrix greenbar
| paper) with me. Oh, I was paid $5/hour, which I just looked up
| would be $17.81/hour now. Then again, I burned up $5 gas and two
| hours of driving a day, and $5 at the cafeteria.
|
| Every so often I'd get a call from the guy who used the program
| asking for a fix or enhancement. He didn't know how to program,
| and I didn't have a computer, so I'd just dictate "between lines
| 1280 and 1290, type "1291 IF F2 < 100 THEN 1320:F2=B2+1" or
| whatever.
|
| I went back to the same job the next summer and they had
| visicalc. I wrote everything as visicalc spreadsheets on the same
| Apple II, and taught the user how it all worked. It took 10% of
| the time and I never got calls again -- the user could figure out
| how to tweak things.
|
| The main problem was the Apple II could only produce 40 columns
| of text, which really sucked. You could buy a card which could
| put out 80x24 but for some reason they didn't want to spend the
| money even though it seemed like it would have paid for itself in
| faster navigation.
| catMotors wrote:
| Borland Quattro Pro Spreadsheet
|
| 40+ years ago..
|
| Great keyboard recorder language! Edit to branch, compare, move
| entries, auto mixing randomly placed consecutive primes in a
| matrix array, where sums on columns, or products on columns, so
| all columns would become semi-equal, I recall often surprising
| difference plus/minus 1 for sums. Like the 1st pass of a magic
| square.
|
| It was fun to make, and fun to watch, much slower back then.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Forgotten: _WingZ_ [1]. In an era when they were trying to
| combine spreadsheet + charts + database + who-the-hell-knows-
| what-else.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informix_Wingz
| buescher wrote:
| Wingz, in its brief era, was really nice. In-sheet graphics
| before Excel had them, and more intuitive too.
| satisfice wrote:
| I loved Quattro Pro. Version 1 was very good.
| hbn wrote:
| "If VisiCalc had been written for some other computer, you'd be
| interviewing somebody else right now!"
|
| - Steve Jobs
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npqD602G90o
| joezydeco wrote:
| I had to beg to get the family to buy an Apple ][, but then
| someone handed me a pirated copy of VisiCalc and my dad wouldn't
| let it go. He was a recently minted MBA that had spent years
| grinding with SPSS and VisiCalc was a magical thing.
|
| After that we always had nice printers and lots of storage as he
| started a consultancy and drove it all from that Apple ][. He
| even wrote _documents_ in the spreadsheet, he refused all
| attempts to move to a proper word processor. Lots of fond
| memories there.
| kyledrake wrote:
| One of the highlights of my work in tech was meeting someone I
| had read about in many computing history books, Bob Frankston,
| who dropped in for the Web 1.0 Conf at MIT Media Lab years ago. I
| was indifferent to the coffee choice at the event so I grabbed
| light toast, but he preferred dark roast coffee and politely but
| intently requested dark roast, so the next day I made sure we had
| both. That's where I learned that I preferred it too and I've
| been drinking dark roast ever since. Thanks Bob.
|
| I wish I was in the room when he tried to demo Visicalc to the
| Atari developers, IIRC, the Atari documentary implied that a lot
| of them showed up to the demo stoned and were perhaps a little
| confused why they were being shown the demo.
| satisfice wrote:
| What about the Mac? In 1988 I was using something that must have
| been called MacCalc or similar. It was neither Excel nor Lotus.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Maybe MultiPlan? Early Microsoft spreadsheet (before Excel)
| that ran on a number of microcomputers.
| danieltrembath wrote:
| AppleWorks/ClarisWorks?
| wang_li wrote:
| It's not particularly subject related, but that CRT filter
| applied to a 4x pixel multiplied image is just wrong.
| ChristopherDrum wrote:
| Author here. Sorry to disappoint you.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Hard to over state how important Visicalc was. I was a Supercalc
| user under CP/M, really great software. "A superpower" in its
| day.
| andreybaskov wrote:
| I bought a used VisiCalc box on eBay to run it on my restored
| Apple II and experience what it was like to use it back in a day
| on original hardware.
|
| The quality of documentation is something I haven't see in the
| last decade or two. It comes in a binder, well organized, thought
| out with good examples and no expectation of prior knowledge.
| It's a joy to read. The only documentation I read thats better
| than this was the original Apple II Basic manual.
|
| And the best part is it's all keyboard based. Is there something
| like vim but for spreadsheets?
| c22 wrote:
| There's VisiData [https://www.visidata.org/]
| kragen wrote:
| VisiData isn't a spreadsheet, even though it looks like one.
| c22 wrote:
| True, but it might scratch some of the same itches.
| andreybaskov wrote:
| Thanks, that looks interesting. It looks more like a data
| grid, but anything that has keyboard shortcuts to work with
| data is awesome. I'll give it a try.
| buescher wrote:
| Lotus was great from the keyboard. People who are very good at
| Excel do use the keyboard heavily and it's a joy to watch.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| One wonders if there are still features of these old keyboard-
| based spreadsheet programs that never made the jump to Excel and
| the like.
| d_sem wrote:
| This was before my time but I appreciate the write up and the
| nostalgia from folks in this thread.
|
| My take away was that VisiCalc was a fairly straight forward
| technological problem, but a 10,000x+ impact idea. I feel like
| there are still idea's like this waiting in the shadows to be
| discovered by a lowly undergrad somewhere who tries something
| unique for the first time.
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