Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

"A spreadsheet is then the simplest, most organically natural way of organizing discrete units of information, the easiest way to perform CRUD operations on any type of data."

So... you've basically answered the question here.

"It’s been 40 years since the original Visicalc spreadsheet program was released, and no one has been able to beat them"

There is a reason that columnar workbooks and spreadsheets have been around since humans started writing down numbers and manipulating them... it works.

A "grid of cells" does exactly what it is supposed to do in the most efficient manner possible. The only "innovation" opportunities are making the underlying product suck less, or providing analytics/reporting functionality.

I think about this a lot. There is a need for more data-driven applications to create graphics that are more “track able” than excel. I have a series of charts that need to be sent out to multiple people (internal and external) each week. Charts, logos, tables, etc could benefit from a pipeline but without needing a data engineer. Right now, we have a standard data download from Bloomberg or another data provider, macros to change the format, access to slice, back to excel where the charts are 75% standard but might need some tweaking. Bloomberg might not classify one company as healthcare but I want to include them so access keeps a list or companies I want. That same Bloomberg output could include companies some of my colleagues would classify as tech companies so relevant for multiple people. No way to see what was done last week or changes made to the chart / table output from one person to another besides new versions of the same excel file (but still no way to see the logs)

Long winded description but hopefully helps describe how important excel is but there is still room to grow.

Working with jupyter, I'm seriously contemplating around how to bring the best of Excel into a pandas or jupyter workflow. Mostly for exploration but also making reports, statistics, aggregations

I've shifted to Airbase for pretty much anything data sheet related. The ability to have more typical data-flow joins with an easier to manage UX that teaches folks along the way is pretty phenomenal. It grows as you need, but still remains relatively simple.

It's one of my favorite pieces of software from the past decade.