[mjevans]

Different levels of usability.

Spreadsheets as simple ledgers? Wonderful, assuming you know about using ranges and how to use $ (or not) as part of reference statements.

Even that level of complexity seems like wizardry to most office drones.

However a spreadsheet is weak compared to a true relational logic engine; a modern database. Databases /have/ had the decades of refinement and are very good tools. Yet for those tools you kind of nail it. Specialists are required to correctly harness that potential.