Re: The enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

On 10/29/24 7:43 AM, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:

rbowman wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:
 

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 10:24:46 -0400, DFS wrote:
>

"‘I grew up with it’: readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Early_history
>
I sure as hell didn't grow up with it...

 I remember Lotus 1-2-3 and VisiCalc. Then the Microsoft copycats came along.

First spreadsheet I can recall seeing was on an Apple ][ at work.  A few years later, I got a ][ myself and even used it for a work project at my next job.
As they started to buy IT, it started with  1-2-3 on the DOS boxes, but Mac was Word & Excel, so we started to get Excel on the DOS side too.
We also had a healthy chunk of software from PFS ... "First Choice" for Doc/Spreadsheet and "Harvard Graphics" in lieu of Powerpoint.
But as the platform wars started, each MS-DOS update conveniently tended to break Lotus but not Excel, so that prompted us to drop Excel.
Later, as IT Departments grew in size & influence, the DIY era ended and internal corporate standardization pushed everyone onto MS-Office.
Ironic in this thread's context is that this desktop standardization mandate also removed allowing compilers in the Engineering offices: customized & project-specific analysis tools had originally been written on mainframes, but with the rise of desktops had migrated to the desktop but now could no longer be employed.
But because Excel was an "IT Dept approved" desktop application and free under site license (Mathmatica wasn't free & wasn't available quickly), Excel was often used to fill this need for computational analysis, which is why one could see monstrosities of spreadsheets doing weird stuff.
-hh