The well-known spreadsheet software for Apple II is VisiCalc, developed by Dan Bricklin and his buddy Bob Frankston.

The germination of the design idea for VisiCalc took place in 1977, when Brickering had left the DEC company where he had previously worked and was pursuing an MBA at Harvard Business School. During this period, the most painful thing for Brickerin was that some of the extracurricular assignments assigned by the tutor were monotonous and tedious things about filling out documents, accounts and statistical forms, which were not only no fun at all, but also prone to mistakes if you were not careful. Naturally, Brickering, who can play with computers, is unwilling to put up with it, and he soon takes aim at the school's minicomputer, intending to leave these troublesome tasks to the computer, but he finds that different financial problems require different calculation methods and need to be reprogrammed frequently, so Brickering, who hates repetition, has the idea of writing a general program.

In the spring of 1978, Bricklin learned the popular BASIC language, and with a passion for creativity, he decided to start his own programming, this time starting with a microcomputer. At that time, the popular microcomputers mainly included Kemodo's PET, Tangdi's TRS-80, and Apple's Apple II, which were not compatible with each other, so the initial choice was very important. In the end, Brickering chose the Apple II, not that the performance of the Apple II was much better, but poor Brickering could only borrow an Apple II at that time. The first version was written in BASIC, which was slow enough to make coffee during the calculation, but it had initially acquired the basic characteristics of spreadsheets.

If you want to make the program run faster, you can only consider using assembly, but Brickerin is not good at this, and then he thinks of his friend Frankston. Brickerin told Frankston about his idea, and Frankston, who had long been interested in starting a business, readily agreed, and the two formed a small company called Software Arts (SA) in early 1979 to work together to improve the program in Brickerin's hands. The two worked hard for more than two months to finally write the first commercial software of the software art company. After the software was written, the two gave the software the name "VisiCalc", "Visible" is "visible" and "Calculate" is "calculated", the two words are cut off and then superimposed, the so-called VisiCalc, that is, "visible calculation".

Soon after, VisiCalc was officially launched into the commercial market with the help of D. Fylstra, the owner of the personal software company, and after a lackluster initial sales, VisiCalc quickly became popular among many corporate finance personnel, and in turn boosted sales of the Apple II, and by 1980 more than 25,000 Apple computers were mainly used to run the spreadsheet.

……

Of course, these are all situations that exist in the history of IT, Zhang Lexing is not very clear, he only knows that VisiCalc is the most popular spreadsheet software on Apple II, and he also analyzed this software when he studied the Apple II emulator, and now that there is a real Apple II, Zhang Lexing can't help but want to revisit it again.

After trying out the random spreadsheet software VisiCalc, Zhang Lexing felt that the software was similar to his impression, the software functions were relatively simple, and the improvement plan he had conceived was useful. Zhang Lexing has seen a lot of spreadsheet software, from the earliest CCED, Louts1-2-3, to the later MS-Execl, which almost dominated the world, although these software requirements for the system far exceed the Apple II in front of him, but some of the humanized considerations in their design are still very valuable for reference. After reviewing the source code of VisiCalc with disassembly and recalling the many spreadsheet software he had used, Zhang Lexing gradually had a design framework for spreadsheet software in his mind. Software design begins......

More than two weeks later,The spreadsheet program has been preliminarily completed,Most of the envisaged functions are basically completed,The functions that have not been realized are because of the lack of performance of Apple II,Whenever this time Zhang Lexing is very nostalgic for the IBM-PC that is still in its infancy,Of course, he misses the Core 2 dual-core even more。 The next step is the debugging and optimization stage of the software, troubleshooting, optimization and optimization, after almost two weeks, the spreadsheet software has been basically debugged to the best state, after spending a few days to make up for the help of the software, it is finally done, and finally he casually named the software VisualForm.

After completing the design of VisualForm, Zhang Lexing made a simple modification of the random VisiCalc, of course, his main idea was to make a software to explore the way and see the attitude of the factory towards computers. VisiCalc itself does not support double bytes, and this Apple II does not have a Chinese card, of course, there is no way to display Chinese characters directly. Fortunately, when Zhang Lexing was studying the Apple II emulator, he saw some design information about the Apple soft font library, which inspired him very much, and many of the codes in it are still remembered clearly.

It took Zhang Lexing three days to design a detachable Chinese character processing module, using hook technology to take over the output processing of VisiCalc, successfully Chinese its main interface, and make appropriate adjustments according to some of the financial management of the factory he learned. It's just that due to the lack of a comprehensive font library and input method, of course, the main thing is that Zhang Lexing really doesn't have the energy to draw Chinese characters point by point, just drawing the Chinese characters displayed on the interface makes him tired half to death, and those days the eyes seem to be composed of dots, so only a fixed Chinese prompt can be displayed, and Chinese can not be entered.

Chinese shows that as soon as VisiCalc came out, Uncle Zhao was shocked at that time. Looking at the unfamiliar and somewhat familiar words on the computer screen (there are relatively few dot patterns of Chinese characters, and the strokes of some words can only be adjusted), Uncle Zhao's mouth is open enough to stuff eggs.

"Oh my God, Lexing, you...... How did you come up with this?" Uncle Zhao, who came back to his senses, immediately grabbed me and asked.

"I have nothing to do and play, I saw some program processing methods from these materials, I tried it, I didn't expect it to really show Chinese characters, but Chinese characters are too troublesome to draw, so I almost drew for most of the day for these words. Zhang Lexing skillfully pushed Uncle Zhao's question to the information that could not speak, and no one in the factory could understand this English information anyway.

"Lexing, I think this one you made is quite interesting, or I'll show it to the leader. Uncle Zhao said excitedly.

"Uncle Zhao, don't worry. I'm going to perfect this. Zhang Lexing is actually a little worried that after the software is handed in, this computer will not have a chance to use, after all, there is such an Apple II in the factory, and he also wants to save more useful programs for himself.

couldn't resist Zhang Lexing's insistence, so Uncle Zhao had to reluctantly agree. But it's only been a week, and Uncle Zhao couldn't hold back for a while when he was having dinner with the factory director, so he told the software by the way. The computer room has made some achievements, especially related to the people arranged by the factory director to enter the factory, and the factory director is of course very satisfied, and immediately asked the office director to arrange relevant leaders to visit.

After Zhang Lexing and Uncle Zhao demonstrated the Chinese VisiCalc together, the leaders looked very happy and gave enthusiastic speeches.

“…… The comrades in the computer room are still working very hard, and the results are still obvious......" said leader A.

“…… This situation shows that the comrades in our factory are still very studying, and they deserve encouragement!"

……

However, when someone mentioned whether the finance office was considering using it, the deputy director in charge of finance was not happy, and made a statement that he did not trust the computer, and finally said that he would not be responsible if there was a problem with the accounts in the future. In the end, the office director came out to play a round to ease the atmosphere, of course, this software was not surprisingly sent to the archives, sealed for use when there are superior leaders to inspect in the future, as for the financial office, of course, it is impossible to use, they only trust their own pen and abacus at this time.

Uncle Zhao is nothing, or happy all day long, it may be a great honor for him to be praised by the factory leaders, but Zhang Lexing is a little disappointed, originally holding a glimmer of hope, looking forward to a little change after being reborn, but I didn't expect that the current enterprise really doesn't pay attention to computers at all, and is even more disdainful of computer software, and even has some rejection psychology, just treat computers as a kind of decoration. Zhang Lexing sighed secretly, he was completely disappointed that he relied on the computer to get out of the factory, and he didn't know when it would be the end of the factory if he was mixed up in the factory like this, and it seemed that he had to think of another way.

After work, Zhang Lexing began to inquire everywhere, wanting to see if there was a place in the city to engage in computer research, but the result was naturally very disappointed. Zhang Lexing couldn't help but sigh: "Can we only go to Beijing to find a place to give full play to our abilities? However, I also know that at my current age, even if I find a place to engage in computer research, even if I am not directly bombarded by someone at the door, it is impossible for such a little guy to engage in research. ”

In addition to perfecting the operating system, Zhang Lexing spent more energy writing gadgets and games, while the rest of the time Zhang Lexing spent drawing comics, preparing to persist for two years and then try to find a new way out.

Unexpectedly, just when Zhang Lexing was discouraged, things suddenly took a turn for the better, of course, he didn't expect what kind of opportunity this was at the beginning.

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