I’ve always despised spreadsheets... the confusion between input data, methods of calculation, and output is absolutely foul.
I hung on to Lotus Improv as long as I could, and then opted for Quantrix Modeller, and now do most of my stuff in a combination of locally hosted SQL and Mathematica.
What kind of broken paradigm allows for an errant keystroke to break the flow of a calculation? Or allowing data to go stale, only to break the calculation when you refresh and get back more rows than you previously had?
Sometimes it absolutely makes sense to have input/calc/output on the same "sheet" or set of "sheets."
Unfortunately, most people don't know how to set up a spreadsheet in a way that makes this work (clearly delineating the input/calc/output sections with data validation, formatting, protection etc).
Of course, if you were to make a solution that "forced" these choices on the user they'll cry about losing their freedom.
So we are stuck with spreadsheets in many cases.
And then there are the cases where using a spreadsheet makes no sense. I'd say it's about 50/50: Half the stuff currently done in spreadsheets makes sense, half of it would be better done elsewhere.
I've managed to move more than half of our previous spreadsheet workload out of spreadsheets and into more appropriate software systems.
I hung on to Lotus Improv as long as I could, and then opted for Quantrix Modeller, and now do most of my stuff in a combination of locally hosted SQL and Mathematica.
What kind of broken paradigm allows for an errant keystroke to break the flow of a calculation? Or allowing data to go stale, only to break the calculation when you refresh and get back more rows than you previously had?