Why are spreadsheets so great? I've only ever used 'em for basic work stuff and am curious where the wonders lie
From a technical perspective, they're a really cool combination of a declarative programming model—which allows everything that depends on a given piece of data to know relatively efficiently when and how to recompute itself when the underlying data changes—and an accessible, visual model that makes them usable for people with almost no programming experience at all. The actual formula syntax is more arcane than it really could be for legacy reasons, but that aside it's a really great on-ramp from zero programming experience to making relatively complex interactive applications. I really love tools that make that kind of UI prototyping easy and accessible.
From an aesthetic perspective, spreadsheets represent an ordering of the complex reality of the world into a comprehensible and cogent schema while also being flexible and mutable enough to allow creative reorganization and admixture of that schema as new needs arise. They're the inflection point between understanding and exploration. They're an attempt to recreate the world in microcosm without denying the fact that that's ultimately impossible to do.
i love an excuse to be reminded of + post this wonderful observation about spreadsheets as a user interface. image transcription under the fold, emphasis added by me.
What is it about the Internet, with its pretty graphics and simple clicks, that makes users feel so inundated; and about the spreadsheet-so complicated a tool-that makes them bold? The received wisdom about user- friendliness is challenged here. Human beings, I think, do not like to be condescended to.
The spreadsheet presumes nothing. It has no specific knowledge, no data, no steps it performs. What it offers instead is a complex vocabulary for expressing knowledge. It is, literally, a blank sheet of paper with a notion of columns and rows and everything held on that sheet is presumed to come not from the program but from the human user. In the relationship between human and computer that underlies the spreadsheet, the human is the repository of knowledge, the smart agent, the active party. The user gives data its shape-places it in columns and rows, expresses the complex relationships among those columns and rows-and eventually turns data into more knowledge. It is the end user who creates information, who gives form to data, who informs the spreadsheet.
