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Most Excel users never enter a formula. They use Excel when they need a table. The gridlines are the most important feature of Excel, not recalc. Joel is exagg
by gruseom 15y ago
Most Excel users never enter a formula. They use Excel when they need a table. The gridlines are the most important feature of Excel, not recalc.
Joel is exaggerating for effect. Yes, many spreadsheets are static lists. But how far would a spreadsheet product get without formulas? As soon as you wanted to add prices to your grocery list, you'd be stuck.
His critique of Improv is interesting. (Steve Jobs adored Improv for years btw.) He's saying that by imposing more structure on the free-form grid, Improv lost the ad hoc users.
The free-form grid is the most important thing about spreadsheets. But interactivity (formulas/recalc) is part of that, even when you're not using it.
- tptacek 15y agoI thought the same thing as I read this. I understand the point Spolsky was making and wouldn't want to argue with it, but my dad used Excel formulas, every salesperson I've ever worked with used basic formulas, the marketing teams I worked with made basic formulas... Also, surely one of the reasons so many people used it to make lists was that it was the tool Office shipped with that had gridlines (Word has them too, but they're clunky). If you bundle a spreadsheet along with the world's most popular word processor, it's no wonder it gets used for pedestrian tasks in addition to the ones Bricklin thought about. This is a point Spolsky danced around in a much earlier blog post: 80% of users want just 20% of the features of a program, but they're not the same 20%.