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But then, who'd invent excel? Maybe we need the compromise and let some people be the 10xcel engineer...

• TZubiri 2y ago
  For sure, I just don't see it coming out of a place of "I need to analyze my credit card statement" Excel wasn't built out of a small personal project, it was a huge multi engineer project built on microsoft (built upon decades of spreadsheet software tradition and arguably centuries of accounting tradition), by a company that had a huge userbase that acted as stakeholders for managing the data and accounts of multi million dollar companies and small businesses alike. I think that complex contraptions arise more from complex necessities than overengineering a solution from a simple problem
  • ajross 2y ago
    The VisiCalc/Lotus erasure is very strong in this comment.
    • TZubiri 2y ago
      Wouldn't they fit within the "decades of spreadsheet software tradition"?
  • bitwize 2y ago
    > Excel wasn't built out of a small personal project, But another program with a similar impact -- dBase, the precursor to Microsoft Access, was. Cecil Ratliff wrote it to manage football statistics so he could win his office football pool.