1987
Excel 2.0
thanks to one of my fellow EuSprIG members:
https://twitter.com/EuSpRIG/status/1579766182319882243
visicalc
supercalc
lotus
lotus123
excel
AppleWorks
MicrosoftWorks
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It made me look at the top to see where you posted this. I was guessing makes me smile.
Added that. Not sure anyone else had WYSIWYG, but it was an overlay for Lotus that added borders and colors, because Lotus was still a monotone program.
The bottom middle blurb reminds me of my first job, around this time: we had our super programmer who always got the latest CPU. I always wanted his sloppy seconds, so I showed my boss how fast my macro in Lotus would run on my PC versus his, in order to get it. Moved from XT to 286 to 386 a lot quicker than the other worker bees.
Printers are also a fun evolution.
“Wow, a laser printer, 6 pages per minute, cool!”
“Ooh TWO trays!”
“Ooh a color one!”
(obligatory) “‘PC Load Letter’? WTF does that mean??”
Last one I saw at an office had 5 trays (two with 2000 sheet capacities), color, both sides copying in all permutations, it could send a PDF to my e-mail, could print 100+ pages collated, etc. It was a mini Kinko’s.
The one at my desk right now is only missing the volume feature, which I sometimes need for personal stuff. So maybe I drive to the office for that.
Mail / Delivery Service
FAX
FISK (anyone? anyone?)
E-mail
Microfiche
The first spreadsheet I ever used was called Lotus Symphony - which was a short lived evolution of 123 that had some word processing capabilities that I didn’t use.
Don’t forget Quatro Pro.
This brought a smile to my face. I wouldn’t say I was the super programmer, but I was the guy who got the latest (unix) box because I needed the power and had my old machine got passed on to someone else. I got a new machine about every couple months. Good times!
Hollerith cards
Good to know, after 25 years, Excel has the same basic menu bar headings.
The Holocaust
tabulated by Hollerith
I should find the punch card from my parents’ college scrapbook and take a pic… (of course, it’s a love letter from my dad)
I have 2 friends with PhD’s in the history of technology
cool, what are their theses on?
Used this on my first job for a dozen years or so. Making the transition from its macro language to Excel VBA was interesting to say the least.
Yeah, the best fun was writing a macro that could alter its own code.
NASCAR and magnetic recording media (culminating in the pinnacle event, the 8 track tape)
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Well I wouldn’t get too comfortable with it. There are many people at MS who want to update the MS Office scripting language to Python. There are also people at the company who very much do not. But you didn’t hear that from me.