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Comment by drewcoo | Hacker News Reader

> VisiCalc started as a reference card.

That appears to be false. This [1] tells how if they couldn't explain the feature on the reference card, they'd change the code. So the code came first.

> The Nest thermostat started as a press release.

From what I can tell, the product was announced in a Verge article[2] where there is a demo-able product. And the secret to their success, according to the article, was that it was designed by people who'd worked on phones.

From what I can tell, actual product documentation came last in both cases, exactly as we'd expect.

So the article starts with a double-barrel blast of bullshit. In the article's favor, they did write the bullshit down, though.

[1] https://landley.net/history/mirror/apple2/implementingvisica...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2011/11/14/2559567/tony-fadell-nest...

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Author here. The quote about VisiCalc starting as a reference card came from VisiCalc co-founder Dan Bricklin's TED Talk, where he mentioned writing the reference card first. And in the article you linked (which I'd also quoted from), Bob Frankston mentions the documentation card as part of prototyping, where it seems the card came first, and said "If we couldn't figure out how to explain a feature on the reference card we would change the program," which seemed to me another point towards documentation-drive development.

And on the Nest thermostat, that story came from founder Tony Fadell's book, Build, where he says he wrote a press release before they started working on the Next thermostat. That would have been prior to The Verge's article, based on his story.

Hope that helps clarify a bit.

Fadell also spoke about this story on the Decoder podcast recently

This is confusing to me. Did VisiCalc start as a reference card or not? Because the article doesn't say this and neither does the transcript of the TED talk.

>In addition to prototyping, Dan put together a reference card for users. If we couldn't figure out how to explain a feature on the reference card we would change the program. The original method for copying formulas was too complicated so we just changed the design rather than try to explain it.

Sounds like the reference card came after prototyping and was used as feedback in an iterative prototyping process. Pretty standard. This isn't "write before you code."

It’s definitely possible I got the order wrong. I still feel reasonably confident that documentation, and the general ideas sketched out on the VisiCalc reference card, were a core part of the start of the project, before the code was anywhere near finalized. I’m trying to find an update if I’m able to, but there was a copy I saw in my research of the VisiCalc reference card made before the program was finished, with a sketch instead of a screenshot, and then it showed what changed and what didn’t between that and the release. And Frankston comment about that if the code couldn’t match the card, they’d change the code, seemed to me that at least the docs set the tone for the code, and not the other way around.

Fadell’s writing the press release before building the Nest and Raskin writing The Book of Macintosh to kick off the original Mac, though, both are directly documented so we can be certain there.

At any rate, appreciate the push back—definitely want to have the story straight! Will dig a bit more on VisiCalc and see if I can find more confirmation.

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