the reason excel sheets work well is most data is simple. the underlying tool may have complex features but most don’t use them. the value from simple features is so high it always is worth it
As someone that often finds myself using spreadsheets to merge, refine, organize, or otherwise work with different datasets, I would say that the simplest 10% of features cover about 90% of my use-cases. It's rare that I need to go digging for anything truly complex (usually VLOOKUP is as hard as it gets). Most data is indeed simple.
I agree, I think most people just need something one step up from a calculator that they can persist on a hard drive and create basic pivot tables/charts from.
Having this ability is a huge advantage over a calculator.
100% agree. There's a good reason spreadsheets have lasted since lotus 123 (1983) to now, you can get so much millage from the simple idea of of a grid of values.