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I haven't seen that. I tried installing it on my Excel but it looks like kind of pro version is needed for PowerPivot. I'll try to find some more information on it. Thanks!
I like the concept of simple editor for the formula.
Maybe an editor that would extract all formulas from the sheet and give you different view after double click would be a good solution. On one hand you would still have your normal spreadsheet but you can go to a different level if you want to do refactoring etc.
As a programmer I haven't actually thought much about how important this link between a cell in a grid and its formula may be.
I have seen huge (i mean HUGE) Excel files full of complex formulas being built by non-programmers. Some even took whole night to recalculate. There was a programmers mindset emerging from those files - extracting common formulas to separate cells (DRY), writing 'unit' tests by using formatting (if result for sample input is less than 0 then make the cell red - which means someone broke the formula).
The question arises - is there a point where a non-programmer starts thinking like a programmer, on a different level of abstraction? Is it possible to teach non-programmers some basic programming practices to make their work easier?
I agree it's tough to sell such product to a big company (actually selling any product to enterprise without credibility - a lot of users or big users - is very tough). IMO if you are small and you want to succeed in selling such product you need to make smaller companies love your product first and then talk to the big guys.
On the other hand I have spoken to Marcus (CEO and cofounder of Think-cell) about how they started and their product went viral quite fast and was used by one of the big four companies even at the early stage. I believe that if you hit the spot and build something that has a huge urgency in the market then even big fence in front of enterprise is not going to be your problem.
Having said this, I agree that selling this product could be tough. It's not just adding value but it changes the way people work - and enterprise hates changes. The more time big company has to sacrifice to change employees habits, the harder it is for them to decide to buy the product even if it adds value long term.
Thanks for your insights. I am happy to hear that you see potential in the project.
I have a gut feeling that there is a lot of analysts who use Excel for difficult and heavy computations and who don't want to learn programming but would love to structure their formulas in a more decent manner.
> Users don't buy plugins in larger businesses, etc.
I don't agree - take a look at https://www.think-cell.com/en/ they are a company providing add-ins used by big four. They have 350 000 users in 7500+ companies with a revenue of ~50-70 millions of euro per year.
> The Venn-diagram between programming and Excel has no overlap imho
I believe the overlap exists. IMO it's possible to teach Excel users some basic practices from programming (like code review, testing etc). We (I have a company with my friends) actually have created a project that allowed a company write formulas in a simple file which generated a fully functional webapp. They used version control and code review together with unit tests. This allowed analysts build a solution using their knowledge without the need to have programming skills. This is a different approach programming Formulas -> Web application, but I believe an approach programming Formulas -> Excel is also possible.
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