[taeric]

I would argue that Excel's sole strength is that it directly features the data to the user. It is not that things are declarative that is nice, it is that the data is all you see. Because that is all a lot of folks care about.

Indeed, the way in which many people populate spreadsheets is far from the functional way. It is typically much more imperative. They literally have a list of commands from someone for how to make the chart or tabulation they are interested in seeing appear.

[dragonwriter]

The fact that spreadsheet regular users are programmed by spreadsheet power users (the ones building charts, formulas, etc.) in an imperative way does not mean that the creation of the spreadsheet by the power user is not declarative, and is really completely irrelevant to what is being discussed.