> I've learned products designed to replace spreadsheets have a huge hurdle because the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job.
In general? Not really. Just as frequently, the fancy tool promoters don't care to understand the subtleties of the job and when it requires flexibility or judgment that the spreadsheet accommodates better. They have their hammer -- software formally engineered by software experts for disempowered "users" -- and everything looks like a nail.
"It's faster and more reliable (when everything goes as planned)" isn't really the slam dunk these folks think it is.
Give these users a more flexible tool like Alteryx, that actually lets them do their job, and I've seen that they'll happily migrate off of Excel.
I agree. One of the great things about Excel is that it’s massively flexible. It’s almost the antithesis of what most development environments want to be. Programming is about considering all the code paths. Spreadsheets are about “what if”.
The flip side of this is that understanding the behaviour of a spreadsheet is generally a specialist job, which is why we have people whose job it is to “run” the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has rules and boundaries and it will stop working if you just start plugging random values into formula cells.
I would add that any tool looking to replace Excel will be build on some very powerful but very primitive foundations, I’m order to compete with that flexibility. It’ll never be about adding a special “view” like AirTable or just tacking in Python.
Excel is like Emacs; most users will write some Elisp at some point, it’s designed to be meddled with from the ground up. AirTable is the VSCode; most users will never write a line of plugin code and when you do you’ll find you can’t extend much.
In general? Not really. Just as frequently, the fancy tool promoters don't care to understand the subtleties of the job and when it requires flexibility or judgment that the spreadsheet accommodates better. They have their hammer -- software formally engineered by software experts for disempowered "users" -- and everything looks like a nail.
"It's faster and more reliable (when everything goes as planned)" isn't really the slam dunk these folks think it is.
Give these users a more flexible tool like Alteryx, that actually lets them do their job, and I've seen that they'll happily migrate off of Excel.