We suck at excel because we recognize that it has a bad data model and avoid it. So when we want to calculate something we pick something with better structure. something more pleasant to use than the spreadsheets "it's a big bag of cells" approach.
replyReally, spreadsheets are fine, they probably hit that sweet spot for easy to get something together and deep enough to express complex needs. But I have to admit, now that I have better tools I don't enjoy doing work in them anymore.
I feel it's the extreme of "static vs dynamic languages". In Excel, even variables (cells) are dynamic, not fixed names in a lexical scope.
replyThe reactive programming aspect is genuinely good; I wish my business logic could be expressed declaritively and the system just reacted automatically.
I also find it fascinating to consider the looks-like-a-spreadsheet-but-statically-typed-and-scoped world (airtable is a step in this direction, for example).