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 modelāwhich allows everything that depends on a given piece of data to know relatively efficiently when and how to recompute itself when the underlying data changesāand 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.
a drill press makes no judgments. you can walk up and turn it on, and if you don't know how to do that safely, maybe something bad happens, but probably not, most of the time. you'll be on your own, though; there are no instructions. it does not do the "talking to short people" thing. if you're brave enough to put something under the bit and pull on the handle, you'll learn about a thing it can do.
people with no formal training figure out that you can do stuff like "make a series of holes very close together to make a rudimentary slot." is it a good slot? absolutely not. a milling machine would have done much better - but now they have a slot, where they didn't before, and nobody told them how to do that. with enough time, they might realize that they can clean that slot up with a chisel, and now they're doing exactly what respected Fine Woodworkers do. the tools suggest their own uses; the user suggests the rest with their needs and imagination.
the spreadsheet is from Before, when a program was simply a box of tools you either did or didn't know how to use. it makes no judgments. if you don't know how to use it, it won't be very approachable, but after you learn just a tiny bit, you start coming up with your own ideas. when you find a need you don't know how to satisfy, you go looking for just enough information to get past the hurdle, and stop. you don't have to digest the entire manual, or learn any new Concepts [translator's note: spoken with same disgust as "COM apartment"]
people get horrified by what "nontechnical" folks build with nested piles of VLOOKUPs, but they built it. it's done. they learned how to nail, so they started nailing things together, and stopped when they had what they wanted. it's made of nothing but planks and nails, and it does what they need. the beauty of doing it on a computer is that it won't fall apart and kill anyone, and Excel is so efficient that it won't even be slow. you have to really, truly abuse the hell out of a spreadsheet to bog it down; I've never seen it done.
and then of course there's VBA, but when i say "excel is a gateway drug to Real Programming" i'm using "gateway drug" with the originally intended tone
it's really gratifying seeing my love of spreadsheets reflected and expanded on by so many people here
