(I remembered your APL experience from some previous HN comment or other.) You're right that spreadsheets tend to be more heterogeneous than a chain of array op

(I remembered your APL experience from some previous HN comment or other.) You're right that spreadsheets tend to be more heterogeneous than a chain of array operators. I'm not suggesting that APL as a language should be integrated into spreadsheets, but rather that there is a way to implement spreadsheet language (formulas and cells) that partially approaches how APL treats computation. This is possible because there is a lot of implicitly array-oriented computation in typical spreadsheets – that's what you're "declaring" when you drag a formula across a range of cells. What would a spreadsheet system be like if it really exploited this? The trick is to do it without breaking too much with the well-established mental model of Excel users.