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Everyone talks about trying to create a new type of programming environment, something intuitive and visual and that lets you think in new and creative ways. Ex

Everyone talks about trying to create a new type of programming environment, something intuitive and visual and that lets you think in new and creative ways. Excel is exactly that. It's easy and nonintimidating to nonprogrammers. It's visual, intuitive, and with a basic understanding of math and an idea of cells you can do a large number of tasks that would otherwise require a program. Yes, it's a problem when it gets expanded into massive, ridiculous spreadsheets-from-Hell, but most spreadsheets are a tool that let everyone program. People keep talking about some magic new visual programming REPL-like tool that will revolutionize programming, but I think we already have it: it's Excel.

qwerty456127 9y ago
"Everyone talks about trying to create a new type of programming environment, something intuitive and visual and that lets you think in new and creative ways. Excel is exactly that" - yes, it is, except it is a way too old already though all the notable competitors seem dedicating all the efforts to reproducing its legacy as closely as possible. I'd love to see an attempt to design a brand-new spreadsheet from scratch, built around a modern programming language (like Python instead of fossil VBA), modern practical file formats (like HDF5 and SQLite instead of obscure and clumsy xls, xlsx and ods) and all the experience and advances in the UX science accumulated during the recent years. Good news are some projects are heading this way already, e.g. pyspread and jamovi (they can hardly be taketn too serious at this moment but at least they illustrate there are people that see the problems of "classic" spreadhseets and have viable ideas on solving them).
- clouddrover 9y ago
  How do you mean it's "way too old already"? If it works, it works. You're guaranteed to introduce problems every time you introduce change so there needs to be a strong reason to do. Why change what works?
  - qwerty456127 9y ago
    > How do you mean it's "way too old already" I mean many obvious ways it can be improved have been discovered during the time passed. Although it obviously makes no sense to give up the whole thing just because it has been introduced long ago it still is not a bad idea to consider minor and major improvements or even rethinking the whole idea occasionally. We could still be using good old typewriters/teletypes if the fact they worked was stopping us from thinking about inventing tools to do the same job with less labour and more fun.
cm2187 9y ago
To be honest there is a case for teaching business users to program. But the blank page of the IDE is intimidating for people who do not know where to start, particularly if they have their boss breathing down their neck to get it done today. That’s where a basic programming training at school or university would be priceless. Not to make everyone a programmer. But to make everyone able to better perform and automate mundane tasks. IT departments would hate that even more than business users using Excel. But in the mind of most IT departments, business users should only be allowed to click a couple of buttons and should budget & prioritise an IT project if they need anything else.

qwerty456127 9y ago

"Everyone talks about trying to create a new type of programming environment, something intuitive and visual and that lets you think in new and creative ways. Excel is exactly that" - yes, it is, except it is a way too old already though all the notable competitors seem dedicating all the efforts to reproducing its legacy as closely as possible. I'd love to see an attempt to design a brand-new spreadsheet from scratch, built around a modern programming language (like Python instead of fossil VBA), modern practical file formats (like HDF5 and SQLite instead of obscure and clumsy xls, xlsx and ods) and all the experience and advances in the UX science accumulated during the recent years. Good news are some projects are heading this way already, e.g. pyspread and jamovi (they can hardly be taketn too serious at this moment but at least they illustrate there are people that see the problems of "classic" spreadhseets and have viable ideas on solving them).

clouddrover 9y ago
How do you mean it's "way too old already"? If it works, it works. You're guaranteed to introduce problems every time you introduce change so there needs to be a strong reason to do. Why change what works?
- qwerty456127 9y ago
  > How do you mean it's "way too old already" I mean many obvious ways it can be improved have been discovered during the time passed. Although it obviously makes no sense to give up the whole thing just because it has been introduced long ago it still is not a bad idea to consider minor and major improvements or even rethinking the whole idea occasionally. We could still be using good old typewriters/teletypes if the fact they worked was stopping us from thinking about inventing tools to do the same job with less labour and more fun.

cm2187 9y ago

To be honest there is a case for teaching business users to program. But the blank page of the IDE is intimidating for people who do not know where to start, particularly if they have their boss breathing down their neck to get it done today. That’s where a basic programming training at school or university would be priceless. Not to make everyone a programmer. But to make everyone able to better perform and automate mundane tasks. IT departments would hate that even more than business users using Excel. But in the mind of most IT departments, business users should only be allowed to click a couple of buttons and should budget & prioritise an IT project if they need anything else.