[dang]

I've known many Excel power users who are technically minded and experts in their domains, but nevertheless are not programmers. (Edit: obviously they're programmers in the sense that they make the computer compute things, but not via a general-purpose language.) They have no interest in learning Python or JavaScript or even VBA—it doesn't fit with how they like to think. Instead, they lay out complex calculations in Excel using long chains of intermediate columns (zeros and ones and COUNTIF, anyone?).

[eximius]

Sounds like Functional Programming might make a lot of sense to them (operating on transformations and whatnot)

[dang]

There are definitely some symmetries there, but also differences. These users don't think so abstractly. They get their computation working on one set of numbers and then, if they need to reuse it, copy-paste and modify.

[crisnoble]

The only thing a super complex formula is missing is the notion of a for loop. In lieu of that, I used to pull a column down as many times as the loop needed to run. Then I discovered macros, then I discovered javascript.

[dang]

Some spreadsheet users discover programming and take to it, which is great. Others have the opposite reaction—writing scripts doesn't fit how they like to think or work. It sounds like you are the first kind of user; the ones I was thinking of are the latter.

[mistermann]

> Then I discovered macros, then I discovered javascript.

Is the javascript comment somehow related to Excel, or had you moved beyond Excel at that point?

[crisnoble]

I have move beyond Excel, and now I am a web developer. I still have a special place in my heart for overly complex spreadsheets.