Thierry Hubert
1 HN recommender · recommended in 5 months, 2022–2026
14:10 · 4.2K views · Jan 24, 2018
A 1990 Lotus sales demo of Improv, a spreadsheet built for the NeXT computer that rethought the grid with named categories and multiple views. The uploader, who tested it at Price Waterhouse, presents it as an early, innovative vision of the spreadsheet.
HN links it in spreadsheet-reinvention threads as the clearest look at what Improv did differently, with a distinctive NeXTstep aesthetic.
5 comments from Hacker News
One thing I didn't like about it (and briefly experimented with, in a prototype for my own game in a similar vein), was, much like EVE, it's called a “spreadsheet game”, but there's no spreadsheets in the game , or any sort of API bridge that makes doing stuff with the game in an external spreadsheet environment easier. I understand that this may just be part of the appeal of these sorts of games for many people—reading through stat blocks and wiki pages to figure out what numbers and what formulas need to go where to build the Ultimate Spreadsheet for your purposes (though in the end doesn't everyone just use existing Ultimate Spreadsheets created by others, or at least use them as reference?). And trust me, I did have a lot of fun building my Google Sheets infrastructure to coordinate business and production between myself and the three friends I got to (briefly) play Prosperous Universe with me. Also, don't get me wrong, I also enjoyed the subsequent rabbit-hole of learning how spreadsheet implementations actually work, including historical alternative spreadsheet implementations that had a lot of cool ideas like Lotus Improv [0]. But, in the end, I just wasn't having enough fun with Prosperous Universe to keep playing after awhile. [0] This video is worth watching the opening few minutes of just for the vibes alone (trust me) this video
I've never used it, Lotus Improv seems like it was awesome this video (plus the 80s–90s vibes of this video are simply incredible) I think there's still a ton of room for spreadsheet tech to evolve, but nobody seems to really be trying anymore, because Excel is the Gold Standard that everyone seems comfortable with. for example: why do neither of the mainstream spreadsheet apps (Excel, Google Sheets) have first-class support for row and column headers? seems like an absolute no-brainer to me, and everyone who has worked in spreadsheets for more than thirty minutes.
for anyone who hasn't seen Lotus Improv before and is both curious about what it did differently from "standard" 1-2-3/Excel spreadsheet programs and wistfully nostalgic for late 80s/early 90s corporate vibes, check out this video
The sad thing is how little it improved Lotus tried to re-think spreadsheets with a product called Improv - it was full of good ideas but the product never took off. The product launched on NeXTSTEP in 1991 and then on Windows in 1993. Here's a 1990 sales video (low-resolution) from Lotus explaining how it works, and how it differs from traditional spreadsheets: this video
Aw, he demos the Windows version - the original NeXTstep version has timeless aesthetics. this video Another innovative but forgotten piece of “better than spreadsheet” software is Javelin PLUS. [LINK]