Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died

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Dennis Austin dies at 76.<p>* Born in Pittsburgh, studied engineering at the University of Virginia<p>* Collaborated with Robert Gaskins at Forethought to create PowerPoint<p>* Forethought acquired by Microsoft<p>* By 1993, PowerPoint generating more than $100 million in sales<p>* Product is widely used, but controversial and target of jokes<p>&gt; Mr. Austin and Gaskins acknowledged the complaints, but thought they were unfairly aimed at the software and not the people who were using it to make lazy, poor presentations.<p>&gt; “It’s just like the printing press,” Mr. Austin told the Wall Street Journal in 2007. “It enabled all sorts of garbage to be printed.”

I’ll never forget the grade 9 science class Powerpoint presentation I did in 1998. I had each letter of every headline flying in one by one with a laser sound (pew pew pew). That was my first moment of magic with Powerpoint.

Dennis and I overlapped at Tandem Computers in the early 1980s, but we didn&#x27;t meet until 2003, when we were both members of a small private club of computer geezers. In addition to being a great software designer he was one of the nicest and most thoughtful people I&#x27;ve ever met.

If you want to read about the development of PowerPoint by its visionary, you can checkout the book Sweating Bullets by Robert Gaskins:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amzn.to&#x2F;3PvTvF0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amzn.to&#x2F;3PvTvF0</a><p>Dennis Austin was the lead developer and Gaskins was the idea guy&#x2F;manager.

I hope his funeral has a slide presentation with some amazing animations and sound effects! :)

Apart from being useful for presentations, Powerpoint is still my go-to for mockups - screw Figma, I can achieve 80% of the result in 20% of the time.

PowerPoint is an impressively mixed bag. Something of an extreme example, in my mind, of the &quot;amorality&quot; of tools and, yet, the strongly &quot;good&quot; &#x2F; &quot;bad&quot; that can come of them.<p>PowerPoint, for all its putative and&#x2F;or quite real flaws and bad ... points ... is, in some sense, one of the most powerful tools in the modern world. How many decisions have hinged on PowerPoint presentations? How many decisions might have been subtly affected by aspects of the design and implementation of PowerPoint (over versions &#x2F; time)? ...<p>It&#x27;s absolutely been hugely useful at times, and, also, seemingly a preview for some Dante-style &quot;ring of hell&quot;.<p>In any case, I salute Mr. Austin, offer my condolences to friends and family*, and ... well, I was going to point to a comedic take on PowerPoint that I love but it doesn&#x27;t fit w&#x2F; this news, so, simply: R.I.P. Mr. Austin.<p>* Seriously, not just as a matter of form - I have used it for years through good and bad. I definitely feel some connection, though marginal comparatively.

I work in a Corporate where we have lots of &quot;strategy&quot; teams and PPTs flying around.<p>What I learned is that PPT are more than a presentation format in this culture, they are a signaling tool:<p>• something that is &quot;just&quot; an email, or &quot;just&quot; something somebody said in a meeting doesn&#x27;t carry much weight in Corporates<p>• .. but if you put it in a PPT with some graphics, it signals you&#x27;ve thought about it, and probably had some lesser minions also think about it and prepare a PPT<p>• .. further, if you put it in a PPT, that means you&#x27;re serious about your position --- it signals commitment<p>• .. and finally, a PPT shows that you know how to play the game, you&#x27;re not some tech weirdo that thinks PPTs are irrelevant<p>PPTs are a cultural currency in Corporates.

PowerPoint wasn&#x27;t the first though, was it? I remember Harvard Graphics and something from Lotus also?

One aspect of Amazon culture I’ve enjoyed is that meetings are document driven, and PPTs are rare, even non existent. Meetings start with dedicated reading time. It feels like PPT engendered this false sense of communication by making it easier to bullet-ize and visualize. PPT in practice lowers the critical thinking required of presenters and presentees.

+ did his job well<p>+ helped many communicate<p><pre><code> + made it easier to miscommunication thereby; </code></pre> Summary:<p>tying manager types into harmless video games was probably a net win for the world

powerpoint is one of those things that most people don’t think about nowadays, but before presentation software, people had to carry printouts, or slide decks for projectors, maybe laminated sheets for overhead projectors. PowerPoint has saved people a huge amount of work.

A strange legacy. Most of the management in my company cannot digest even simple information if it’s not on PowerPoint slides.<p>Even when it is on preparing PowerPoint slides, text heavy slides are a big no no.<p>Some days, more time is spent on PowerPoint slides than writing code, or actually engineering. We jokingly call presentation prep work as getting ready to push the PowerPoint to prod.

missed an opportunity to format the article as slides

I remember we used Harvard Graphics for DOS before we used PowerPoint.

I use Google Slides as a lightweight notetaking format at work. This works great for me because it&#x27;s super flexible, and has the added benefit that I can easily convert my notes to actual presentable slides during standups or other meetings. Usually these aren&#x27;t actual polished slides such that you&#x27;d see in a corporate presentation, but talking points to keep meetings more focused and productive.

&gt; The Rolling Stones told The New York Times: &quot;the surprise opening act by Severe Tire Damage was a good reminder of the democratic nature of the Internet.&quot;<p>God, I miss the old internet, when you could say something like that and actually mean it.

Related video from years ago, an interview with the Computer History Museum:<p><i>Oral History of Dennis R. Austin, 2015</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;DgNIHXEHTTs?si=bQdAlW3bteVH7xvL" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;DgNIHXEHTTs?si=bQdAlW3bteVH7xvL</a>

PowerPoint is where I first understood the concept of image editing as a kid - dragging and dropping. And clip art was before it’s time - imagine how much people would love that exact same thing copypasted onto a reel or a TikTok. RIP Dennis.

When I got a job in academia and was faced with creating my first conference poster, I was amazed to discover PowerPoint is the customary software for creating them. It does a pretty good job, too.

What I always wondered: is PPT = PowerPoinT or PowerPointPresenTation?

Next time you have a presentation to write, try using LaTeX with the Beamer module instead of a WYSIWYG editor. I wouldn&#x27;t ever go back, myself.

RIP - what an impact though. i wonder if they’ll have a PowerPoint slides at the memorial, if it was me, i would have told my loved ones to do that.

Advance.<p>May his memory be eternal.

What&#x27;s best library to create powerpoint on the web nowadays ?

Truly a sad day for consulting. The entire industry runs on PPT.

PowerPoint.. Well it was Denis or someone but unfortunately we haven&#x27;t grown to something better yet

i&#x27;m guessing hacker news won&#x27;t put the black bar<p>EDIT: i&#x27;m not roasting a dead person you guys. anyway i feel like if people hate a tool it&#x27;s sometimes because the tool is <i>so good</i> that it gets abused for every other purpose and some of those purposes aren&#x27;t a good fit, it&#x27;s not because the tool was bad it&#x27;s the opposite.

Will there be a PowerPoint presentation at his memorial service?

People hating PowerPoint should really try hating invention of gunpowder first then Edison burning down elephants with electrical current.

I demand the black ribbon!

Let&#x27;s all remember that correlation is not causation. Although we all know it was dangerous to work with a toxic product for so long.

He&#x27;s moved on to the next slide, please.

I heard he was shot several times...<p>... died of too many bullet points<p>(I&#x27;ll see myself out)

Every death is an utter tragedy. We should collectively work to end biological mortality.

Everyone is using Google Slides though now, no? So much so that my boss always says &quot;Prepare some slides for the meeting&quot; and not &quot;Prepare a power point&quot;.