Hacker News Reader

Yep and just look at all the people using Excel. They're not saying 'oh if only this was a diagramming tool where I could draw lots of lines between boxes instead'.

View on HN

Lots of people struggle to use Excel at all beyond simple non-relational lists. And even then they do tons of raw copying and manual work to generate the data they need. I would not say that Excel’s prevalence is somehow a sign that tables are natural to people.

I think Excel's prevalence is a sign that tables are natural to people (to the degree we can say a data structure of any kind is natural, but, well) -- the struggles come in, I think, from

- trying to use it with data where tables are a poor fit, or

- trying to use it with data that can't be reasonably represented in more than two or three tables

I still use spreadsheets for simple "databases," but I can't think offhand of any time I've a spreadsheet that requires more than two interlinked tables/sheets.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com