I agree with a lot of the points raised here. I think many of the problems with spreadsheets are due to the software rather than the users. As mentioned in the article, its hard to slowly iterate from a small manageable spreadsheet to an larger software solution.
For example, Excel would be a lot more usable and maintainable for me if there was a way to make a special "data sheet" in which data types are forced to be consistent within columns and there was a concept of column names. Still GUI-based and user-friendly. That would encourage a logical seperation between data entry, data output, and computations. In my experience, the main challenge of helping users with spreadsheets is when they create spaghetti code that mixes data and computation together.
For example, Excel would be a lot more usable and maintainable for me if there was a way to make a special "data sheet" in which data types are forced to be consistent within columns and there was a concept of column names. Still GUI-based and user-friendly. That would encourage a logical seperation between data entry, data output, and computations. In my experience, the main challenge of helping users with spreadsheets is when they create spaghetti code that mixes data and computation together.