[david927]

which in this context is text

Ha! Nice try. You program in a text file. You don't get to somehow call that a spreadsheet just to make your argument sound better.

My whole point is that we need to turn that free text into a spreadsheet (from which graphs can be produced) and "your accountants will thank you".

[michaelmrose]

Why is it that only very simple programs can we written effectively with spreadsheets and that setups where complex arrangements of linked spreadsheets and databases are described as horrible to work with by the people that have to work with them.

Is it possible that nearly every professional is right and you are wrong and text is an effective means to represent computation.

[david927]

Why is it that only very simple programs can we written effectively with spreadsheets and that setups where complex arrangements of linked spreadsheets and databases are described as horrible to work with by the people that have to work with them?

I completely understand where you're coming from. I'm saying, "try to imagine how it should be," not, "how it is." Those experiences are horrible because current spreadsheets are for simple functions and nothing more.

Is it possible that nearly every professional is right and you are wrong and text is an effective means to represent computation?

I guess this is where we disagree. I see the software industry as a mess and every professional as a person who was given one part of a Rube Goldberg contraption to be an expert on. The contraption works, to be sure, but it boils an egg in a hundred arcane steps. Given the state of our art, we have no leg to stand on to say what is and is not an effective means to represent computation. Normally a billion professionals would lend clout to your argument, but in the case of our industry, we know that they just staff a million abstruse contraptions. It just means we lack imagination and ownership: we're professionals, yes, but on whatever junk we're handed.

It wasn't always like that. We have seen that Computer Science doesn't really advance, but what is fascinating is that maybe 90% of those pushing for it to advance are of the original, older, generation that brought us that innovation in the first place. Max Planck once said something to the effect of, "Science advances one funeral at a time." I worry that Computer Science retreats one funeral at a time. Slowly we're losing those from the time when our thinking wasn't constrained with current tools; failed efforts were taken as learning points, not barriers; and no one viewed current technology as something the gods handed down to them but as something they created (maybe the day before), so they were constantly evaluating it.

Yes, the future of software development has to be away from free text toward data, and it follows as a logical syllogism. I was about to add that that is my opinion, but it's not so much of an opinion as a conclusion. While it's absolutely fair to wonder what that means, we can't brush it away because we already have the best Rube Goldberg contraption we could ever have.