[bayouborne]

It's hard to over-estimate the tectonic impact the idea of spreadsheet had on the microcomputer scene at the time. Overnight 'programming' came to the masses. Someone with a problem (almost any kind of problem, scientific, financial, statistical, etc) could sit down, and easily start describing sequential flow, numerical manipulation and a ton of other things. It was the second coming of the International Business Machine.

[bombcar]

The spreadsheet literally changed how business was run, and arguably a bunch of financial advances after it were directly because of it.

Being able to see values recalculated instantly was earthshattering in a way that even the Internet really wasn't.