51–60 of 223 posts
For almost all tasks, yes. But it differs a lot by task. The power of the spreadsheet model is that it is minimally acceptable for a wide array of tasks, not that it is usually optimal.
Excel is seriously killing humanity. No version control, no debugging, brittle support for automation. Excel, to me, is the single most obvious sign that we must get rid of the giant tech monopolies to re-enable innovation in software.
Thanks for posting! I love the topic - I've written before [1] about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. I personally think that the evolution of spreadsheets is less about changing the UI, and instead making it possible for spreadsheet users to easily transition to more powerful programming tools in a natural and easy way. So I've spent the past…
> I personally think that the evolution of spreadsheets is less about changing the UI, and instead making it possible for spreadsheet users to easily transition to more powerful programming tools in a natural and easy way. So I've spent the past 2 years building Mito [2]. Following the article idea of spreadsheet as the best paradigm, why you think users should abandon it in favor of other?
I don't think anyone should abandon tools if they are working for them :-)
As the author mentions, the original moniker for Excel was VisiCalc - a visual calculator. There's no inherent reason why 3D spatial representation would be a worse medium for a calculator.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this just a programming problem? Build an application that accepts the data, produces the result, and has a GUI for managing all exceptions? I've build many of these things.
> Isn't this just a programming problem? What seems to be described is a UI design problem. Once the UI is designed, it also needs programmed in some form, but that doesn't seem to be the problem, just a not-particularly-interesting task required in the implementation. Not all problems that require programming are programming problems. (In fact, most are not.)
There are always complaints that Excel is a terrible solution to some very specific set of repeated tasks. Every few months, there's a posting about how all we need is a "Better Excel" that would perfectly solve everyone's totally unique 12-step problem.
Such a tool is never going to exist. Thankfully we can build tools specifically for those problems when generic tools aren't good enough. Not every problem is worth a programming solution; there's only so much time and money and paying a bunch of people to cut and paste might just be the better option.
Thanks for posting! I love the topic - I've written before [1] about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. I personally think that the evolution of spreadsheets is less about changing the UI, and instead making it possible for spreadsheet users to easily transition to more powerful programming tools in a natural and easy way. So I've spent the past…
> I personally think that the evolution of spreadsheets is less about changing the UI, and instead making it possible for spreadsheet users to easily transition to more powerful programming tools in a natural and easy way. So I've spent the past 2 years building Mito [2]. Following the article idea of spreadsheet as the best paradigm, why you think users should abandon it in favor of other?
In fact, to interact with large sets of data we have found it and it’s SQL. Again for power users. You data geeks are of course an exception and have a completely different set of tools.
Even though current VR/AR interfaces are completely useless for Excel or other data-management tasks (no keyboard support, unreliable controls, lack of development interest), I think in the future there are more embodied / spatial treatments of data access that could feel like an improvement on '2D' Excel. As the author mentions, the original moniker for Excel was VisiCalc - a visual calculator. There's no inherent r…