Ode to Excel
Marina Guzik · Apress eBooks · 2011
Spreadsheets and I, we go back a long way; and I mean a long way—as far as DOS-driven Lotus 1–2–3 with its execution of one-key commands. I still remember most of them. Many high-tech historians attribute the revolutionary success of IBM PCs in the 1980s to this program. It was the first computer software ever to use television consumer advertising. Alas, it lost the battle of rows and columns to a far more superior, forever improving, and now world-dominating rival—Microsoft Excel. But that does not diminish the brilliant simplicity of Lotus’s product name: “1–2–3” signified the combination of three fundamental capabilities of these instruments: Calculable spreadsheets Data analysis Visual presentation These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.