4 ms·

Spreadsheets are a variant of Dataflow programming, so however they do it.

• galaxyLogic 6y ago
  Right but spreadsheets are hardly used for "general purpose programming". They are good for the tasks they are used for but "systems" are not implemented with spreadsheets.
  • erichocean 6y ago
    If you are implying that normal, for+while loop programming is difficult with dataflow approaches…you're right.
    • galaxyLogic 6y ago
      That's what I would suspect. Dataflow programing would seem to hold great promise in making programs more understandable. But there would seem to be limits as to where it can be applied (for-if) etc. It is not a universal model for practical programming, I assume. It's a bit like "pure functional programming". We can't really do that in practice because we need IO. The best we can do is to divide the program into two parts, purely functional, and imperative. Similarly I assume we could (and should try to) divide programs into "data-flow-part" and "synchronous-part".