"Excel is still the biggest and most successful no-code tool"
What's interesting is that many users build quite complex formulas and spreadsheets, yet Excel's formula and VBA syntax is (in my opinion) harder to learn than other programming languages. For example, I'd argue a language like Ruby is simpler in many aspects than using VBA or building complex formulas.
Like Microsoft, Google Sheets also has quite an ugly, clumsy feel to its syntax.
The terrible programmable usability of these products (Excel and Sheets) could only have come from the mind of a developer (harsh I know, but true).
I don’t think most people have issues with programming because of syntax. It’s the lack of visual feedback that’s making things so difficult. Click on one of those cells and it’s color coding which cells make up that formula. Sum(everything in this box) is really easy to get where a foreach loop doing the exact same thing is more abstract.
People just kind of default to {do some magic} on [various things] -> (Some result that looks about like I was expecting).
What’s really interesting is Spreadsheets tend to have bugs where the result is incorrect but reasonably close to reality. Aka 38 vs 35 not Null Pointer Exception, this makes them in many ways seductively dangerous in a this looks close therefore it must be easy to fix way.
My company is pushing Python to mechanical engineers as an alternative to complex spreadsheets (with many sheets, complex formulas, and VBA). In practice it's already a massive pain to just get a working installation with the correct modules. Even if I make a working script, 95% of my colleagues can't run it. While Excel is just there, everywhere.
What's interesting is that many users build quite complex formulas and spreadsheets, yet Excel's formula and VBA syntax is (in my opinion) harder to learn than other programming languages. For example, I'd argue a language like Ruby is simpler in many aspects than using VBA or building complex formulas.
Like Microsoft, Google Sheets also has quite an ugly, clumsy feel to its syntax.
The terrible programmable usability of these products (Excel and Sheets) could only have come from the mind of a developer (harsh I know, but true).