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> Spreadsheets are one of the best possible approaches for prototyping data-driven applications,

Bingo. Back when I worked in big corp Excel was the prototyping tool for the masses. If someone in a remote office built something in Excel that solved a problem that was useful to other offices my team would come in and use that work to build a real system. It was great because a lot of the requirements discovery work happened organically before we would even hear about the process/Excel.

Admittedly, we were a small team and could only take on so much work. This led to Excel being used beyond its capabilities which leads to a host of other problems.



> It was great because a lot of the requirements discovery work happened organically before we would even hear about the process/Excel.

How I wish there existed software designed specifically for that organic discovery, instead of having one which was grown from a tool for accountants.

Spreadsheets is the best end-user development model we know, but it is limited by not having a concept of instantiating new objects.




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