While it’s possible to “easily” write a computer program that is hard to understand later, the gap is much wider with Excel: many more people can create stuff, and the risk of being left with an undecipherable mess seems greater.
I am also still, in 2019, risk-adverse to these complex file formats, even if they are widely used. I can open a real computer program in dozens of editors and run them on many platforms. Yet with Microsoft’s own SharePoint solution, half the time Excel files can’t be opened: my web browser just hangs and then I have to download and open the file in Excel. That’s just crap.
For me, spreadsheets are also frustrating because they can make very poor use of space (and this happens in some other user interfaces too). I shouldn’t be forced to see only 3 numbers at once on a giant display just because they happen to be in cells that are a million miles away and separated by useless empty/unused cells. This feels like what you’d see if web sites decided to just dump their raw database tables onto the screen instead of presenting the data usefully. My theory is that people are just really adaptable, to an unpleasant degree; I’m amazed when I see people squint and tolerate absurd truncation of data and other unhelpful displays.
I am also still, in 2019, risk-adverse to these complex file formats, even if they are widely used. I can open a real computer program in dozens of editors and run them on many platforms. Yet with Microsoft’s own SharePoint solution, half the time Excel files can’t be opened: my web browser just hangs and then I have to download and open the file in Excel. That’s just crap.
For me, spreadsheets are also frustrating because they can make very poor use of space (and this happens in some other user interfaces too). I shouldn’t be forced to see only 3 numbers at once on a giant display just because they happen to be in cells that are a million miles away and separated by useless empty/unused cells. This feels like what you’d see if web sites decided to just dump their raw database tables onto the screen instead of presenting the data usefully. My theory is that people are just really adaptable, to an unpleasant degree; I’m amazed when I see people squint and tolerate absurd truncation of data and other unhelpful displays.