The fact that you had to use so many big words to explain why spreadsheets aren't a good way for users to "write some numbers here and then calculate some numbe

The fact that you had to use so many big words to explain why spreadsheets aren't a good way for users to "write some numbers here and then calculate some numbers from those first numbers over here" says to me that your definition of "good" varies a fair bit from the definition these users are using. Joins are great and relational databases are super useful but these peoples' problems are 99% solved by "store a list, maybe do some arithmetic."