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> Data transformations are inherently a pipeline/function abstraction, and even non-technical users understand that. Spreadsheets don't offer a good way to decompose a data transformation process and inspect each step for correctness.

They absolutely give you that ability; you break the transformation across many cells. Spreadsheets are probably the most successful functional reactive programming paradigm set of languages out there.

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>you break the transformation across many cells

In theory, yes. But the reality, nobody does that unless an error is apparent and needs to be investigated. The vast majority of calculations in Excel spreadsheets are done using cumbersome, multi-line, unreadable formulas that try to pack as much logic as possible into one expression. Such obscure formulas are the main reason why lots of business-critical Excel spreadsheets contain grave errors, many of which are are never discovered.

It is like programming, there are people that keep doing goto and methods that take two screens in Excel, and there are those that bothered to learn lambda, powerquery and addons.

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