Memories of Visi/SuperCalc

Dave’s drawing analogies between Google News Reader and ? (one supposes Radio) being compariable as to Lotus Jazz (yuk) compared to the forerunner – VisiCalc. Boy do these names draw some memories back from the dungeon.

Anyone remember Framework? Text based ‘windows’ multifunction software, and surprisingly useful as I recall.

Excel (and Word) certainly did pave the way for Windows use, but even Wordstar or MS Word for DOS were very functional. I was never much of a 1–2-3 fan – my personal favorite was SuperCalc, which I first discovered on CPM. That OS was a brief fling, not a love affair, terminated once I had a smokin’ 5 megabyte hard drive (yes 5 megabyte!) in an early IBM PC running MS DOS. SuperCalc for many years was a better spreadsheet, building on VisiCalc and taking it a step further. Unfortunately, Lotus were better marketers. Fortunately, SuperCalc was available on DOS at the time too.

Noo much later I ended up working for Computer Associates, who completed the circle by buying Sorcim (VisiCalc’s maker), along with Basic Software Group (ACCPAC) and in later days Nantucket (Clipper) and all sorts of other tools that I had first used as a user (internally within CA), later as functioning cog of the massive acquiring machine of CA.

Now its 25+ years later… where did the time go? My fingers ache, thinking about how many pc (and only briefly a mac), mainframe, vaxen and unix driven keyboards I’ve typed on over the years.