[nacozarina]

Pure-software people didn’t exist; it was always someone who was a statistician, a geologist, a chemist, who was also ‘good at computers’ because it was a skill they cultivated along the way. As a result, most software was highly specialized and arcane. Way too expensive to be a toy.

Early tools like Lotus 1-2-3 and dbase were mind-blowing because they were so generalized and available on consumer appliances. Schools managed milk money, farmers planned crops, the perceived value was instant. There wasn’t an activity that couldn’t benefit.

Back then one computer with a spreadsheet and database was considered more than enough to grow ‘any’ entrepreneurial enterprise from zero to 200 employees. Even in the late 90s I was in a ~300 person multi-national that mostly ran on one Novell server and the entire company lived in Lotus Notes.