| Excel has recently introduced 4-5 VERY big changes: * javascript (arguably 'nobody' knows how to use it though, looking at the scarce resources) * Lambdas * Sharepoint integration, which is a type of shared notebook - and arguably this has ruined excel usability completely, since linking one file to another is basically unusable, what means were are back to the stone age, where people fucking copy paste things between files (omg) * PowerQuery (this is not new, but seems to be the way to "fix" the problem that sharepoint files that can be edited by multiple uses are basically unusable junk) * Updated PivotTable model that allows some basic connections between tables (this all could have been done in multiple other ways before) For me the problem is that with the "multiplayer Excel" that seems to be promoted by Microsoft (shared workbooks on sharepoint, where multiple users can edit them at the same time), Excel lost the main functionality for actual power users, who take data from multiple source files and then consolidate them to one final report. Of course this is still "possible", but not as easy as it was before with shared drives. I see like multiple major regressions at Microsoft that harm "average" office worker productivity now: 1) Excel file linkages broken (as described above) 2) Outlook calendar app on android -> lack of ability to have a custom notification sound (e.g. a 30 second sound), so you can skip fucking reminders, because one "ping" is easy to miss. Why cant I have a fucking calendar reminder that actually reminds me about stuff with sounds? 3) The "new" windows taskbar that combines instances of same program into one button. Do they assume that most users treat windows like a toy? Nearly every office worker has like 3-5 excel files open, 3-5 emails, maybe some PDFs - and has to switch between them. Due to the fact that taskbar is combined by default, incredible amounts od productivity are lost 4) Hibernation is hidden. So you are supposed to turn off your computer every day, then come to the office, wait for 10 minutes for it to turn on (all the antivirus, constant updates, VPN), then turn your programs back, then turn your files / emails back. So you waste another minutes to setup the computer back to work. Compare it with hibernating, where you get your work back exactly the way you left it the day before. (and yes I am aware that updates are important and so on, since they defend against zero-days, but a multi-billion dollar company has the resources to figure out how to do them without productivity loss) 5) Bonus points: your computer can wake up at 3 am to install updates and also wake you up (maybe they changed it recently, or maybe admins control this by policy) 6) Random shutdowns, because some update is so incredibly important that at least once per quarter they have to force you to turn off your computer. Bonus points are when a window pop-up "restart now" and "ok" is the selected default so you accidentally press it while typing (and yes, I do restart my computer at least once per week to get updates) However Microsoft is no longer interested in doing any productivity studies. They dont care. Now it seems their main goal is to offshore development to low cost countries. So we get software that looks as if it was done by lowest bidder. |
Every user could just have their own file, in which they could stash records(Or updates to other people's records), and you could have interfaces to view the data that look like a typical spreadsheet.
The data itself could live in an unsorted set of JSON objects with UUIDs, but the UI could be just as easy as Excel, you'd get tables that you could add or remove columns to and from, and put formulas in the fields, and query in some stripped down language with similar power to Excel.
And it could be 100% compatible, you would be free to put your data in the spreadsheet like the old fashioned way, sync with any cloud including SyncThing and no cloud at all, and data files could just be plain CSV you could version.