{"id":1102,"date":"2014-04-11T23:55:02","date_gmt":"2014-04-12T06:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/?p=1102"},"modified":"2014-04-11T23:55:02","modified_gmt":"2014-04-12T06:55:02","slug":"mind-blown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/04\/11\/mind-blown\/","title":{"rendered":"Mind blown…"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog post is 7\u00c2\u00a0days late. It all started when I got sick, fell behind, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been playing catch up ever since. Some of these catch up blog posts are relevant to the day. Others are just random musings.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

I’m reading Founders at Work<\/a>, and I’ve just had my mind blown. Like… ka-phow! The book is a series of 10 page interviews with founders and early employees of all of the companies we all know and take for granted today. I’m about 1\/3 of the way through, and THE interview of the first third of the book was Dan Bricklin’s<\/a> (founder of Visicalc).<\/p>\n

Dan Bricklin is the father of the spreadsheet. Which is in and of itself an amazing task. The story of Visicalc is actually quite a sad one. Visicalc created the PC industry (the hardware existed, but it lacked a killer app. Visicalc was that killer app). But he also was a major player in the development of the first word processor as developed by DEC.<\/p>\n

Think about that… this guy was on the ground floor of the word processor and the spreadsheet.<\/p>\n

The line that blew my mind was how he described how his experience at DEC building the first word processor gave him visibility into how hard it is to teach people to use software. And that allowed him to create a more compelling mental model for the spreadsheet which people had to learn to use from scratch (not spreadsheets period, but spreadsheets as software).<\/p>\n

Just think about that. He invented A1 being the upper left hand cell in a spreadsheet. The conventions we use today in word processors may have started in the version that he built. His design decisions define how we use two of the most core pieces of software.<\/p>\n

Mind blown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog post is 7\u00c2\u00a0days late. It all started when I got sick, fell behind, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been playing catch up ever since. Some of these catch up blog posts are relevant to the day. Others are just random musings. I’m reading Founders at Work, and I’ve just had my mind blown. Like… ka-phow! The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-hM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1691,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2016\/04\/04\/moving-faster-than-the-documentation\/","url_meta":{"origin":1102,"position":0},"title":"Moving faster than the documentation","date":"April 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I've decided to hop back into the game, and build a new app. I'm not announcing what it is yet because it's no where near ready, but I really like the idea. I've also decided to be really trendy, and use the latest in software development tools. This kills many\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Becoming a PM"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":910,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/02\/10\/books-of-the-month\/","url_meta":{"origin":1102,"position":1},"title":"Book(s) of the month","date":"February 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Having finished two books in January, I'm feeling pretty good about my quest to read one book per month this year. For February, I've chosen two books (and I think it's going to take me until March to finish). They are: Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Year Resolutions"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1307,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/11\/02\/18-days-til-30\/","url_meta":{"origin":1102,"position":2},"title":"18 days til 30","date":"November 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This idea was contributed by the dear and wonderful Saket. If you have an idea, then please let me know it! If the 20 year old version of yourself received $100,000\u00c2\u00a0in cash, what would he do with it? What would you do with it now? Thank you Saket. Great question.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":975,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/03\/03\/february-book-update\/","url_meta":{"origin":1102,"position":3},"title":"February book update","date":"March 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Book update for the New Year's resolution: I'm reading, in parallel, three books. It's not the best way to nail one book per month, but I'm really enjoying it because the context switch keeps the content of each book fresh. Here's where I am with all three: Kanban: Successful Evolutionary\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Year Resolutions"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1224,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/06\/23\/6-years-later\/","url_meta":{"origin":1102,"position":4},"title":"6 years later","date":"June 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I started at TokBox six years ago today. It's been an amazing journey to say the least. I interviewed with 20 companies my 5th year of college. I got a ton of first round interviews because I'd worked my ass off to build a killer internship resume. I just couldn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Becoming a PM"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":400,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/11\/01\/understanding-motivation-part-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":1102,"position":5},"title":"Understanding motivation - part 1","date":"November 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not convinced that motivations are well understood, least of all by me. You see, I was taught in economics that perfectly rational people will respond to a set of incentives in a perfectly rational way.\u00c2\u00a0While I'm sure that that makes sense in a textbook, and of course for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}