Yeah, I used to think the same thing (that Airtable is a Gsheets and Excel competitor). I find it more like Access + Excel. It's a database software with a nice and powerful front end.
Like airtable and ms access, this is a bit more structured. You can do `=$A` to reference A from another column in the same row. But if you want A1+A2, then you probably want a summary table like "group by", or chart it, or do something else. Think about it like a database - summing a column from rows 1 and 2 is not something you normally do.
You can still do this if you want: (there may be an easier way though)
=sum(row.A for _,row in zip(range(2), Table1.all))
Maybe it's similar to Airtable (never used it), because it has nothing similar to GSheets/Excel other than it's a table.
Like, I don't even know how to do "=A1+A2".