I feel like I've been reading variants of this post since 1997. I'm nodding along while simultaneously face-palming. I feel like you have to address the chestnut, at least when writing about it. It's possible that a naive charge is better than a valiant one... but I can't help thinking that excel is the walls of constantinople, and the walls have stood since the first days of mass computing by non computer specialists.

The "spreadsheet for non-programmer programmer" take is probably the most common. For some reason, Sridhar Vembu's take is the one which comes to my mind, mid-200s. I'd be curious to hear his current take, considering how relevant "programmable by non-programmers" is to a lot of Zoho's products.

Spolsky, an OG excel PM, decided to finally notice the over non-intentional reasons that excel is persistent: It makes tables, which is useful for lists. His job was to make excel programmable at one point. It's interesting that he came to the opposite conclusion. Less, not more sophistication.

"We found a fellow whose entire job consisted of maintaining the “number of injuries this week” spreadsheet ...

..He typed the current date in the top of the spreadsheet, printed a copy, put it in a three-ring binder, and that was pretty much his whole, entire job...

..Suddenly we understood why Lotus Improv, which was this fancy futuristic spreadsheet that was going to make Excel obsolete, had failed completely: because it was great at calculations, but terrible at creating tables, and everyone was using Excel for tables, not calculations.

Bing! A light went off in my head.

The great horizontal killer applications are actually just fancy data structures.

Spreadsheets are not just tools for doing “what-if” analysis. They provide a specific data structure: a table. Most Excel users never enter a formula. They use Excel when they need a table. The gridlines are the most important feature of Excel, not recalc."

Word processors are not just tools for writing books, reports, and letters. They provide a specific data structure: lines of text which automatically wrap and split into pages.

PowerPoint is not just a tool for making boring meetings. It provides a specific data structure: an array of full-screen images..."

Anyway.... I feel like "futuristic spreadsheet that will make Excel obsolete" is that dangerous mix of understated ambition and foolhardiness. It probably would have been impossible to invent excel intentionally.

A spreadsheet compiler is an interesting concept. Relational data is often where excel users are often the most sophisticated already and have hard problems to seeking solutions.It's also treacherous, potentially. There's a very sparse no man's land between "real" programming environment and the space excel operates in. Adding power to excel without stepping into that no man's land is a Hard problem. Maybe it's worth biting the bullet, and approaching it as a "my first programming environment." That has learning curve implications, but it would make porting solutions from the "real" programming world a lot easier.

Spolsky's point is relevant. Users are simpler than you think. "Tables & lists" are where most users are. Functions are an intermediate feature. Pivot tables vlookups are advanced features. A small minority use them, or even believe they could learn to. Trello went after sophisticated novices. A spreadsheet compiler is kind of beyond "advanced," and <1%^ of users live here. But... in an country of 1bn people, .1% is still a lot of people. >0.1% of excel users are already programmers.

Vembu: https://www.zoho.com/blog/author/sridhar/page/5 - can't find the one I'm thinking of

Spolsky : https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff...

^I made this up.