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Considering the kinds of things I've seen people put in spreadsheets, and the way they format them, I'm sure I could dig up a few examples of spreadsheets NOT f

• gruseom 18y ago
  I don't doubt that such examples exist, but I'm adamant on this point: the spreadsheet is the invention that gave non-programmers the power to define their own computations. That's why it was so successful. It's the only "programming for non-programmers" invention I know of, of the zillions that have been tried, that doesn't suck. Can you name any others? The ones that come to my mind are the laughable boxes-and-lines "visual programming" gimmicks.
  • thwarted 18y ago
    Oh, I agree with that. But I think the perception of (mock) organization it provides and its visual similarity to graph paper is what draws people to it. The power of spreadsheets are in the computations, and of course people use it for that, but I bet there are just as many spreadsheets that contain entirely static content as there exist spreadsheets that actually use spreadsheets as more than just a glorified grid formatting engine. I've seen people do calculations with desk calculators and then type the results into their spreadsheets. It does let non-programmers define their own computations, but I wouldn't call what non-programmers do with it to be programming, "computation for non-programmers", most definitely. I believe this may come down to how the both of us define programming, however. Interesting contrast, though, is the relative avoidance of accounting ledgers, which spreadsheets are a closer cousin to than they are to graph paper.