Posted on 02/03/2019 6:18:28 PM PST by dynachrome
Our son did not “take” to computers but after working for a firm that required the use of Excel macros (Visual Basic actually) he became proficient at using the system. So much so that he began to use the resulting structures for much of the company software. The result is that he has moved up and worked at several organizations and it now is part of his career to manage the compensation for his company.
"Learn to code" was advice that the media gave to laid-off coal miners and other blue collar workers, so it's natural that somebody or other would throw the same advice back at laid-off journalists.
See it here.
Okay, it looks like the NY Times, Wired, and NPR weren't actually telling laid-off coal miners to "learn to code," but that was the implication of the articles.
It is actually a little funny if you go back and look at the reasons people now give for why Lotus 123 was over taken by Excel. Most of the revisionist historians know about Visual Basic for Applications which was included with Excel starting in 1994, but do not seem to realize that 123 had a capable macro language starting with version 2 in 1984 nine years earlier.
Part of the reason is that most 123 users never used the macro language or even realized it was available and the same was still true of Excel when Visual Basic was integrated. This created great opportunities for people like your son who became proficient using it.
I started working for as a firefighter during in this time period. A couple of years after I was hired and they started installing computers in the stations to enter our reports into. They paid a bundle for the software that they used on them. After a short introduction I realized immediately that they could have done the same type of data entry using 123 and some macro routines. This would have cost a fraction of the price for the development and been far more flexible and efficient. But it was a government run operation run by a people who had no clue whatsoever when it came to this type of thing.
Is that a fact? It sure seems to have upset the media. I'd call that a positive.
All very true. I am one of the people who did not appreciate macros when I was using Lotus, and moved to excel when I learned that lotus statements worked on excel. But I never understood the power of macros — I always turned them off. Part of the reason was that I was not doing anything complex, but the other reason was that I moved on to other languages although I still do my personal spreadsheets on excel.
However, I became a user of Fortran, Algol, Cobal, assy language, and much later JAVA as an instructor. So I did understand the incredible power of the computer. As an engineer, I learned to work with VHDL as well, although not a proficient user, more of a trouble shooter and follower after someone else wrote the code. It has been a great career. Thanks for revisiting those days with me.
I was introduced to Lotus 123 macros by a part time professor that I had to fill in for fairly frequently because he had another better paying job. I had taken a couple of classes from him before I became a lab assistant. He was actually the father of one of my best friends in high school. Up until that time I had thought that they were mostly just meant for copying key strokes. He recommended a couple of books that really opened my eyes. But shortly after that I got a job working for a fire department and at the time it seemed like a better way to pay the bills. The schedule allowed me to do a whole lot of playing and I got married. So this all got put on the back burners.
I didn’t start using Lotus 123 until 1987 so the macro language had already matured somewhat and others had discovered ways to take good advantage of it. I am always surprised by the number of people who claim that the language was extremely limited and only capable of recording keystrokes when in fact it was capable of doing a great deal more than just recording key strokes.
Of course Excel was the obvious winner after Windows replaced DOS and became the standard. But it was still quite awhile before I actually made the switch from Word Perfect and Lotus 123 and this was more for collaborative purposes than my personal needs. I still have boxes with one of the later versions of Lotus Smart Suite along with early DOS versions.
Speaking of memories though... what about those amazing programmable calculators we coveted back then? Now you can emulate them all on your phone, but it is not the same.
Well yes, My first wife worked at HP and she came home with an early HP 45. Wow! I did learn to program it to do long calculations, It was a fantastic advance. I also am a supporter of the reverse polish system that was used, and seems to have lost out to standard equals sign math.
I was teaching then and planned to keep the thing as a memento of the incredible jump into high density chip design. It even had the bug about taking a natural log of one value that the algorithm got wrong. But it disappeared from my briefcase at a school assembly so I lost it.
Somehow I also lost my Pickett slide rule that got me through engineering school.
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