[BjoernKW]

There might be some merit to this in very specific use cases but I suppose for those use cases you might be better off using a language / environment such as Python or R anyway.

I know quite a few heavy Excel users (mostly of the MBA variety). They sometimes accomplish astonishing feats with Excel. They're skilled and knowledgeable problem-solvers but they're not very likely to touch a programming environment other than Excel.

The reason for this presumably is that spreadsheets and Microsoft Excel in particular have hit a sweet spot of an IDE that sort of covers many common business use cases while still being easy enough to use and getting started with for an intelligent person who knows nothing about programming at first. Spreadsheets are also a very visual environment compared to a text-based programming language.

So, yes there's lots to improved about handling spreadsheets, making them more testable and scalable but the core - the spreadsheet development environment if you will - isn't going anywhere. At least I can't see too many people (especially the MBA kind) using a declarative language instead of Excel.

[slantyyz]

>> Spreadsheets are also a very visual environment compared to a text-based programming language.

I like to think of a spreadsheet to be a REPL for the masses.