Dan Bricklin @danb@qoto.org

@lauren I worked there starting the fall of 1973. It had been a place where they worked on wool before DEC came. Made mostly of wood. Floor boards right there, not always straight. Floors didn't always line up. A real maze. Such as wonderful place compared to the sterile other buildings I moved to (and then back to the Mill). Good place to go after the maze of buildings at MIT. Later Monster.com moved in to part of it. Thanks for remembering! https://www.decconnection.org/documents/A%20History%20of%20The%20Mill%209-20161.pdf

@shanselman Scott: Your podcasts are great, and the people you continually get have been great. I loved the one I listened to this morning on cloud engineering and more. I routinely recommend them to others. I guess not everybody learns how the "who's who" becomes one (though not being one doesn't mean you don't have very valuable things to teach). One way is being chosen to be on your podcast since you get such wonderful people.

@glennf Seems prudent to mask now at an event with lots of indoor face-to-face. So many I know personally are getting it in the last few weeks for the first time. Good you didn't get it from your kid.

@provuejim @elkmovie As I recall, there were 8" and 5 1/4" floppy drives. We are talking about 5 1/4". Supporting them was one thing, being able to ship lots of them was another. I remember hearing (but I can't confirm) that Apple had locked up excess production from Shugart Assoc, the main manufacturer, so TRS-80, etc., users couldn't find them in stock for many months once they became popular. In any case, they were more prevalent to Apple II's.

CP/M would be much worse than Apple/TRS80/Pet because no standard memory-mapped screen, which VisiCalc needed for the multi-window, scrolling display. I had lots of experience with that on the DEC video displays (I had influence on).

@elkmovie @provuejim As I recall, our publisher, Personal Software, recommended the Apple first, because floppy drives were more available for it, he told us. We already had access to good tools for the 6502 chip, which Bob knew well, so that was OK. So Jobs was right to point out disks in his interview (see info about 0:55 in http://bricklin.com/tedxtalk.htm ).

@elkmovie @stroughtonsmith Hopefully, for themselves, Netflix, et al, are doing all of the development and learning about the platform (or equivalent) to be ready if it does take off. (Lotus waited too long.) They may, though, find that working with a new platform will help themselves come up with ideas that are beneficial.

@elkmovie @stroughtonsmith Hmm. Reminds me of the late 1980's when Lotus decided not to support MS Windows until they were forced to. Didn't work out so well for them. Excel ate 1-2-3's lunch and Lotus' suite got beat by MS's. (More to it than that, but it was a factor.)

@mimsical I really liked this book. Explains a lot and came out at a very opportune time (just as the COVID logistics issues hit).