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> let's just set a formula for the entire column, and make it refer to another column Meet Lotus Improv (1991): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv ht

• bargle0 4y ago
  Improv brought me joy. There isn’t anything like it.
  • recuter 4y ago
    I read this many times on HN. As far as I can tell Excel copied most of it about a decade later with pivot tables.
    • geocar 4y ago
      Sort of. Improv lets you work in the pivot though, like that's the main view, and the ramifications of that are huge. - You don't have to make your sum/avg/analytic rows because Improv does that automatically. Yes, Excel does this on the pivot tables, but because you can't work there, a lot of people make a SUM(B2:B999) or something to make summary data more accessible. - Your formulas look simple like ConversionRate=Total:Closes/Total:Leads instead of =SUM(A2:A99)/SUM(B2:B99) and sure I know there's a way to make Excel do something like that, but nobody does, which is one thing that makes it hard to mix stuff between multiple documents in Excel -- someone moves the lead count on the lead sheet and it blows everything up back at headquarters. In Improv if someone renamed Leads to Pipe or something it'd break and you'd see that right away with much less chaos. And so on