"Neither COBOL, nor SQL, nor HyperCard, nor AppleScript, nor Inform, nor any other "human-friendly" language, ever served to allow anyone to express a clearly-d

"Neither COBOL, nor SQL, nor HyperCard, nor AppleScript, nor Inform, nor any other "human-friendly" language, ever served to allow anyone to express a clearly-defined thought they wouldn't have been able to express in a language with more "punctuation-y" syntax." The chap on the next row of desks runs 300+ full time students (course success tracking, attendance, nett funding per student &c) on a fairly large Excel spreadsheet. He owns it. He knows it. His colleagues feel that they can edit the data for their students over the shared drive. Works for them. In the UK the funding methodology for Skills for Life funding draw down is, shall we say, complex. Median funding is £3k per student, so 300+ of those is not far short of a million. The students in question are also subject to monitoring by three other agencies, with overlapping data requirements. The cost to produce an application that embodied the business logic for this edge case provision would, I imagine, be quite high. It works for us. If it breaks, it can be fixed.