At the very start of my "career" (in the 80s, when DBIII+ was king) I also noticed that people in general could not grok normalization or any kind of "data desi

At the very start of my "career" (in the 80s, when DBIII+ was king) I also noticed that people in general could not grok normalization or any kind of "data design". So I really think that a spreadsheet was (and still is) way more intuitive at first, and if you were "bold enough" to investigate macros you would just try to solve all your problems with something you had already a good mental image of.