We (Fivetran) are doing exactly this, bridging the gap between spreadsheets and coding and making real algorithms accessible to non-programmers. The primary thi

We (Fivetran) are doing exactly this, bridging the gap between spreadsheets and coding and making real algorithms accessible to non-programmers. The primary thing that makes spreadsheets more approachable is the live-updating, and this feature can be separated from the grid-of-cells model with a cleverly designed language. We'll be starting a private beta in the next few weeks, stay tuned.