This article touches on the revulsion "programmers" have toward Excel.
Deep down it's because many can't imagine writing a program in any way besides rigid, idiomatic OOP
Excel is a pure functional declarative DSL w/ immutability. It has lambdas & you can build applications that are fully data driven, like an ECS
These are already paradigms that the software industry is not open-minded about. And here the mediocre programmer is able to appeal to authority. If "non-technical" users like a bookkeeper can program with Excel, it must be dumber and less elegant than the PHP script I would have written, right?
The best financial modellers are more productive FP devs than many "programmers" deriding Excel, but we've allowed ourselves to think that doesn't "count"
Deep down it's because many can't imagine writing a program in any way besides rigid, idiomatic OOP
Excel is a pure functional declarative DSL w/ immutability. It has lambdas & you can build applications that are fully data driven, like an ECS
These are already paradigms that the software industry is not open-minded about. And here the mediocre programmer is able to appeal to authority. If "non-technical" users like a bookkeeper can program with Excel, it must be dumber and less elegant than the PHP script I would have written, right?
The best financial modellers are more productive FP devs than many "programmers" deriding Excel, but we've allowed ourselves to think that doesn't "count"