May 2009
Beginner to intermediate
512 pages
14h
English
Content preview from Bricklin on Technology
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
12.1. The VisiCalc Story
12.1.1. Background
I have a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from MIT, class of 1973. In 1970, I met Bob Frankston, then a recent MIT graduate, when we both worked on MIT's Multics project. Multics was a ground-breaking operating system that was a precursor to UNIX and other systems. (The Multics project included hundreds of people.[]) I worked on parts of the user interface (the command system) and the computer languages for applications programmers (APL and LISP). Bob worked on various systems and also had a programming job at Interactive Data Corporation, a large computer timesharing firm catering to the financial industry, and did consulting. He soon thereafter started graduate school at MIT.
After MIT, I worked as a product developer and programmer at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) on computerized typesetting and word processing. Those were the early days of computer-screen-based word processing. (The plain electric typewriter was king at the time.) After DEC, I worked on microprocessor-controlled cash registers for the fast-food industry. Finally, in 1977, I entered the Harvard Business School (HBS) to study for an MBA. I studied accounting, finance, marketing, production planning, logistics, business law, personnel policy, and more.
HBS teaches by the case method. The students prepare for a class by reading a "case" that comes as dozens of pages of prose and figures describing a business ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.