March 20, 2026
Cells, spells, and terminal yells
VisiCalc Reconstructed
Retro spreadsheet comeback sparks Rust vs C brawl and terminal nostalgia
TLDR: A developer rebuilt a minimalist version of VisiCalc, the 1979 spreadsheet that launched personal computing into business. The comments ignite over whether tracking cell dependencies is mandatory, Rust vs C for a text interface, and a wave of terminal-loving nostalgia—proof spreadsheets still rule the culture.
A coder rebuilt a tiny clone of 1979’s legendary VisiCalc—the spreadsheet that turned the Apple II into a business machine—and the crowd went full vintage drama. The post gushes over how simple cells, bare-bones math, and a lightweight interface can still feel magic. But the comments? That’s where the chaos clicks. One camp is swooning for minimalism and terminal-only vibes, asking for command-line sheets with Vi (the classic text editor) key shortcuts. Another camp wants modern bells and whistles.
The hottest fight: complexity. The author hints that keeping a “dependency graph” (basically, tracking which cells rely on which) might be overkill. The thread explodes with a stern clapback: it’s essential for anything non-trivial. Then the language war fires up: C plus ncurses (old-school text UI) versus Rust and Ratatui (a modern text UI library). Rust fans want safety and polish; C loyalists want raw speed and tiny binaries. Nostalgia bursts in with shout-outs to Lotus 1-2-3 and old DOS tools, while curious newcomers ask which office departments first fell for VisiCalc (answer in the replies: finance, accounting, budgeting—aka the spreadsheet Avengers). Bonus chuckles: someone points out you can even make art—or run Game Boy games—inside a sheet. The internet: never change.
Key Points
- •VisiCalc, created in 1979 by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, was written in 6502 assembly to run on 16K RAM machines and became a killer app for the Apple II, selling over 1 million copies.
- •The article rebuilds a minimal VisiCalc-like spreadsheet with three components: a data model, a formula evaluator, and a simple UI.
- •Cells can be empty, numeric, text, or formula; VisiCalc typically used a '+' prefix for formulas, unlike Excel’s '='.
- •A compact grid is defined as 26 columns (A..Z) by 50 rows, smaller than Excel’s and VisiCalc’s limits, to keep implementation minimal.
- •Formulas are evaluated using a recursive descent parser that handles numbers, cell references, functions (e.g., @SUM, @ABS), parentheses, and operator precedence.