> every single person really did have a different 20% they cared about.
I have always wondered what would happen if someone had to invent spreadsheets from scratch, today.
Would conditional formatting and pivot tables get removed, because only 1% of users use them?
Would they feel supporting column, bar, line, area, pie and X/Y charts was just too complicated? That being able to customise the chart styles and colour schemes was just going to confuse users?
Would they think obscure jargon like 'vlookup' was too confusing, and difficult to localise internationally? Would they think formulas were too complicated to ever be a mass-market feature, as well as too difficult to input on mobile?
Would they discover 80% of office suite users don't use the spreadsheet beyond shopping lists, and replace it with a shopping list tool?
My theory is the modern software industry couldn't produce such a product. I don't think I've seen the industry produce a mass market product that requires a comparable level of user expertise in 20 years.
> I have always wondered what would happen if someone had to invent spreadsheets from scratch, today.
This is exactly what Joel Spolsky did:
> What was I talking about? Oh yeah… most people just used Excel to make lists. Suddenly we understood why Lotus Improv, which was this fancy futuristic spreadsheet that was going to make Excel obsolete, had failed completely: because it was great at calculations, but terrible at creating tables, and everyone was using Excel for tables, not calculations.
Excel probably got a decade of runway thanks to piracy. Businesses were happy to buy site licenses. Individuals were happy with a "free" copy from work. Who would try to develop a stripped down alternative in that market? You can't compete with free.
I have always wondered what would happen if someone had to invent spreadsheets from scratch, today.
Would conditional formatting and pivot tables get removed, because only 1% of users use them?
Would they feel supporting column, bar, line, area, pie and X/Y charts was just too complicated? That being able to customise the chart styles and colour schemes was just going to confuse users?
Would they think obscure jargon like 'vlookup' was too confusing, and difficult to localise internationally? Would they think formulas were too complicated to ever be a mass-market feature, as well as too difficult to input on mobile?
Would they discover 80% of office suite users don't use the spreadsheet beyond shopping lists, and replace it with a shopping list tool?
My theory is the modern software industry couldn't produce such a product. I don't think I've seen the industry produce a mass market product that requires a comparable level of user expertise in 20 years.