Talk:Lotus Improv

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any collectors who could provide a screenshot for posterity, it would be much appreciated.

I added an NPOV tag...although I agree that Improv was the best thing since sliced bread, we shouldn't be trying to sell it on the page. 208.17.208.253 21:06, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think this may be excessive zeal for neutrality: given that it isn't on the market anymore, and hasn't been for years, we really can't be trying to "sell it on the page."

What? No really, what the hell are you talking about? Clearly no one is trying to "sell it on the page", because, as the next poster notes, it is no longer sold. If anything is being "sold" is is the concepts that Improv incorporated. These really did make spreadsheets easier to use, and pointing that out seems like the "whole idea". I am removing the notice.Maury 14:14, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I removed the mention of Javelin, since it really has nothing to do with Improv. Javelin was a symbolic financial modelling tool, and Improv still kept its values in a cartesian space. The only thing they really had in common was that most of their potential customers just didn't get it. (User:67.161.42.199 07:01, 8 July 2005)

You may well be right that Javelin and Improv are not closely related. However:

  • Javelin was not a "symbolic", but a numerical tool. It could not simplify (say) x-x => 0.
  • I don't believe Javelin was any more or less finance-specific than Improv or other spreadsheets for that matter. I seem to recall using its convolution function once for engineering modelling, for example.
  • The critical idea they have in common is having more structure than just the array of cells. I don't remember the details, but I think the difference here was that Improv kept the array as the basic underlying structure, while Javelin let you place vectors into an array as one presentation among others.
  • Interesting that Bob Frankston (co-inventor of VisiCalc) says: "It's worth noting that Improv flattered an earlier program, Javelin".

At the very least, Improv should be put in the context of a variety of approaches to 'enriching' spreadsheets at about the same time. For now, I am adding a "see also" link to Javelin, which I think is insufficient, but a start. --Macrakis 8 July 2005 14:02 (UTC)

Well, Javelin wasn't really a spreadsheet at all, per se. It was possible to look at the model in a manner that resembled a spreadsheet, but values in Javelin, unlike Improv or any other spreadsheet, did not have a location in a Cartesian coordinate space. (03:35, 12 July 2005 67.161.42.199)

OK, so it's not a spreadsheet per se. So what? It can still have influenced Improv. Do you claim that it did not? --Macrakis 13:51, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

For all those who never had any contact using Improv I have provided a screenshot of the program. I still use it although it's now more than ten years old and it already ran on Windows 3.1 but 2000 still accepts it without problems :-) I deplore that Lotus (or now IBM) didn't continue this new concept. I think parts of it are still much better than today's spreadsheet programs.Image:Improv.jpg --Michael 07:20, 13 July 2005

[edit] Joel Spolsky's criticism of Lotus Improv

I think that for more balanced view it would be worthy to add critical point of view (Joel Spolsky was formerly working on Excel in Microsoft when Lotus Improv for Windows was being introduced):

Activity based planning is even more important when you are working on version two of a product that people are already using. Here, it may be a matter of observing a sample of customers to see what they are using your program for. In the days of Excel 1.0 through 4.0, most people at Microsoft thought that the most common user activity was doing financial what-if scenarios, where you do things like change the inflation rate and see how this affects your profitability. When we were designing Excel 5.0, the first major release to use serious activity-based planning, we only had to watch about five customers using the product before we realized that an enormous number of people just use Excel to keep lists. They are not entering any formulas or doing any calculation at all! We hadn't even considered this before. Keeping lists turned out to be far more popular than any other activity with Excel. And this led us to invent a whole slew of features that make it easier to keep lists: easier sorting, automatic data entry, the AutoFilter feature which helps you see a slice of your list, and multi-user features which let several people work on the same list at the same time while Excel automatically reconciles everything. While Excel 5 was being designed, Lotus had shipped a “new paradigm” spreadsheet called Improv. According to the press releases, Improv was a whole new generation of spreadsheet, which was going to blow away everything that existed before it. For various strange reasons, Improv was first available on the NeXT, which certainly didn't help its sales, but a lot of smart people believed that Improv would be to NeXT as VisiCalc was to the Apple II: it would be the killer app that made people go out and buy all new hardware just to run one program. Of course, Improv is now a footnote in history. Search for it on the web, and the only links you'll find are from very over-organized storeroom managers who have, for some reason, made a web site with an inventory of all the stuff they have collecting dust. Why? Because in Improv, it was almost impossible to just make lists. The Improv designers thought that people were using spreadsheets to create complicated multi-dimensional financial models. Turns out, if they asked people, they would discover that making lists was so much more common than multi-dimensional financial models, and in Improv, making lists was a downright chore, if not impossible. So activity based planning is helpful in the initial version of your application, where you have to make guesses about what people want to do, but it's even more helpful when you're planning the upgrade, because you understand what your customers are doing.

I am afraid that he is very right.

Really? Which part? That it was a failure because it was on the NeXT? Or that people couldn't enter lists on it? If you do think its the later, why it is that Excel still sucks increadibly at the very task Joel claims they improved? Here's a simple test, open excel, enter data into a cell, and press tab. Lists go DOWN a page... Maury 22:11, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Umm, WP is neither an Improv brochure nor an Excel tutorial, but... if you press <Enter> after entering data into a cell, you do go down to the cell below. --Macrakis 13:24, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Refrences section?

Someone has added several references to the refs section. However, when I look over the article, it remains substantially as I originally wrote it. As far as I can tell, nothing from either of these books was actually referred to.

It's certainly OK to mention these books in a "see also" section, but unless they were actually used in the article body, they should be removed. I will do so, unless someone can point out the additions?

Maury 22:06, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

I tried to perform some cleanup, including removal of the "you" and "your" pronouns, and in general lead towards a more encyclopedic tone. I reorganized, creating a "History" section and a "Concepts" section.

Other than that, the changes were minor. DavidDouthitt  (Talk) 23:40, 16 July 2006 (UTC)