"Success and failure in the technology business is only loosely linked to technical and design excellence.'' -Mitch Kapor
In an article published last week, Mike Langberg observed the 25th anniversary of the spreadsheet. The story recounts Dan Bricklin's invention of Visicalc, it's eclipse by Lotus 1-2-3, which eventually was displaced by Microsoft's Excel. Langberg's story is a fond reminiscence for those of us who remember computers before spreadsheets. In 1979 personal computers were mostly hobbyist toys. We played games on them and wrote games for them, but they were not anything that was useful to the day to day operations of a small business. Today the spreadsheets is more useful than a desk calculator. It sorts lists of names, charts trends in sales, and even crunches long lists of numbers into neat little sums. Happy Birthday.