Everytime someone mentions Clipper (or dBase or FoxPro, or even FoxBase, but Clipper the most), I feel a sene of productive nostalgia, and a constructive anger at the state of technology today. xBase was a beautiful thing - I haven't had as much fun at building software that I've had from the first plink86 till CA-Clipper 5.3's blinker and exospace. Even prolific use of Opus 4.6 doesn't bring the sense of quality and satisfaction that those systems produced.
replyI'm building a new database tool for the web, a frankenstein of Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, MS-Access, and Claude Code. It is where that anger goes these days.
> We spent our entire days in SuperCalc 3 and dBase III, and some of the fancier staff actually got to use 1-2-3. I think we used both because 1-2-3 had copy protection and SuperCalc didn't? But 1-2-3 was clearly better.
replyInfoWorld said in 1986 that SuperCalc 4 competed well with 1-2-3. <https://books.google.com/books?id=Zi8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA35> Did you have experience with that version?
At that time I don't think I was using either spreadsheet program at a level where I would have needed advanced features. I remember using both, and looking now at old screenshots of the splash screens, I think we did eventually upgrade to SuperCalc 4, probably because of better 1-2-3 compatibility.
replyThere was a "red carpet area" in the office where the high-ups worked, and I remember they all used 1-2-3 and we had to support them sometimes... But we pions were using SuperCalc. More than that I don't remember, it's just been too long.