Implementing Function Spreadsheets (2008) [pdf]

I'm the co-founder of Calcapp, an app designer for the spreadsheet crowd which uses Excel-like formulas. I've had hundreds of conversations with potential users and I have a radically different view of what people find problematic with spreadsheets than I did at the outset. I thought that people would be clamoring for version control, unit tests, the ability to define custom functions and to prevent users from tampering with the formulas and data. Instead, people are mostly looking to craft better user interfaces with great usability on mobile and to get into app stores.

I've spent years building calculator apps for healthcare use, where the certification process essentially requires apps to come with unit tests, so I'm definitely biased by my past experience. I'm still somewhat surprised that more people aren't frustrated that spreadsheets make it so hard to build robust software.

I see their point, but this is exactly what I'm trying every day to prevent at work (at least to a certain degree). Way too many people use complex spreadsheets for business critical tasks where other tools are better suited.

If the concept of shareable libraries of function sheets become a reality, we're likely to end up in a scenario where corporate IT maintains one software suite, while the end-users supposed to use that suite ends up using a bunch of spreadsheets instead, but with no quality control and a backup/VCS resembling <filename>.backup.xlsx, <filename>.working.xlsx, <filename> (copy).xlsx, etc....