> I still think we as an industry are still missing the point of why are so many people using excel, especially in areas it shouldn't be used in. There is some hidden UI/UX point we're subtlely missing.
I think there's a kind-of necessary trade-off between flexibility and maintainability. And a similar trade-off between flexibility and robustness. Spreadsheets are flexible, but often not very maintainable, evolvable, or robust.
Ideally you would want a tool that allows you to move along the spreadsheet <-> statically typed language continuum without much pain. So when you finish the spreadsheet prototyping, you can kind of transform that into more robust and maintainable code. But that might have the same inherent short comings as trying to convert a prototype into a production product...
If my conjecture is true -- and I'm not at all sure it is -- then we're not missing a UI/UX point. We're just building tools for people with different priorities.
I think there's a kind-of necessary trade-off between flexibility and maintainability. And a similar trade-off between flexibility and robustness. Spreadsheets are flexible, but often not very maintainable, evolvable, or robust.
Ideally you would want a tool that allows you to move along the spreadsheet <-> statically typed language continuum without much pain. So when you finish the spreadsheet prototyping, you can kind of transform that into more robust and maintainable code. But that might have the same inherent short comings as trying to convert a prototype into a production product...
If my conjecture is true -- and I'm not at all sure it is -- then we're not missing a UI/UX point. We're just building tools for people with different priorities.