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I think one aspect is that business requirements for many of these apps became more complex, which is why we now often use process management or case management tools instead of smaller local programs.

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Agreed, a fair point - companies are a lot more aware of what is possible beyond a spreadsheet! :)

Not only business. I think it's better in 2024, but as someone who lived through the browser war years as a frontend developer.. We may shit on Windows a lot, but learning the windows bits you need to write software in VB were ridiculously less complex than writing a backend AND a frontend for a webapp circa 1999-2005. Just because of all the tiny undocumented differences to make stuff look ok-ish or even quite the same. VB's layouting stuff was very good in my memory.

Most of it is negative possibility? :)

Being 100% serious here: half the SaaS webapp products I've ever used, both personally and at work, would be better and much more ergonomic if implemented as an Excel sheet or an Excel plugin instead.

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