[SGVLUG] article: best software ever written

[Michael Proctor-Smith]

On 8/16/06, Emerson, Tom <Tom.Emerson at wbconsultant.com> wrote:
> Odd that one of his criteria was how "groundbreaking" it was, yet he
> still chose Excel over VisiCalc -- he even admits VisiCalc was "the
> first of it's kind" and everything after that was a derivative, but
> excel took the prize "because it had more features and is what everyone
> uses today" -- sorry, no: before VisiCalc, NOBODY envisioned that sort
> of use of the computer; after VisiCalc, every data processing problem
> starts to look like a spreadsheet :(  [something about only having a
> hammer comes to mind...]

I don't know what your talking about every data processing problem
should be solved with a relational database! You are under estimating
the size of the hammer that should be used. Working on large machinery
tought me that if you think the problem can't be solved with a hammer
go get a bigger hammer.