What We Know About Spreadsheet Errors (2008)

Behavioral change is hard. Spreadsheets are like PHP but worse: they're a good-enough solution aimed at the not only technologically illiterate and underserved (why use a spreadsheet if you've got access to a decent development tool ... oh, it's because you don't have the development tool, and you aren't allowed to obtain it), as well as the technophobic: those who don't see a spreadsheet as "programming" when in fact it actually is.

Spreadsheets are very easy to start and extend, but they reach levels of high technical debt quickly. And any of the various tools for addressing the challenges of spreadsheet error proliferation tend to require tools, skills, access, and/or permissions which the very development base of spreadsheets are unlikely to have.

On your site: provide a more appealing landing page:

• Light background, dark text. Always.

• TELL ME WHAT IT IS!!!

• Fix your stylesheet / page coding. Your "Spreadsheets formulas that build web applications" header is coded with 1) inline styles that 2) combine px and em dimensions and results in 3) lines which overlap. If I've got to pull out an element inspector just to read your site you're doing it wrong.

• Your "About" page doesn't tell me what Cell Master actually is or more importantly what it does and most importantly which of my problems it solves and how. As a senior level technical lead trying to find solutions for internal problems, I'm going to skip over that really fast. And the page remains difficult to read without 1) javascript and 2) Element Inspector deployed. Fix that.

What do I think? Not much.