[swypych]

"It's a nice thought experiment, but in my mind I think the world would be a better place without excel. "

I agree with most everything you said, however, proliferation of programming and automation is a net win in my books, no matter the medium, and good spreadsheet software does this incredibly well. It makes programming in its very basic form accessible to a wide amount of users with a relative gradual and easy to grasp learning curve. Sure you can always improve on it, but I think the world would most definitely not be better off without it.

I do agree that the work is hidden, they can be a nightmare to audit, and I think it would scare a lot of people on this board the amount of business critical functions that are completed by excel and other spreadsheets. However, I like to think this a short term problem, and to the authors point, the industry and the sw needs and will improve, and we should all be trying to eventually close the gap.