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Comment by smoyer | Hacker News Reader

According to wikipedia (I know, I know) the definition of spreadsheet is:

"A spreadsheet is an interactive computer application program for organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form." [1]

We drew grid charts in elementary school for a huge variety of reasons, but we never did them on a computer (because we didn't have computers back then. Spreadsheet software was (first) valuable as a calculation tool because it replaced tedious accounting "worksheets" (also noted by wikipedia) but now I'm curious what percentage of spreadsheets use the mathematic functions at all. Most of those I see around software development are simply ways to organize text.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheet

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From the same wikipedia article:

---------------------

Paper spreadsheets

The word "spreadsheet" came from "spread" in its sense of a newspaper or magazine item (text and/or graphics) that covers two facing pages, extending across the center fold and treating the two pages as one large one. The compound word "spread-sheet" came to mean the format used to present book-keeping ledgers—with columns for categories of expenditures across the top, invoices listed down the left margin, and the amount of each payment in the cell where its row and column intersect—which were, traditionally, a "spread" across facing pages of a bound ledger (book for keeping accounting records) or on oversized sheets of paper (termed "analysis paper") ruled into rows and columns in that format and approximately twice as wide as ordinary paper

My father was a CPA and was trained to use spreadsheets for things like double-entry accounting.

The first time I ever saw a computer it was when he got a job where the accountants had computers [1] and he was so excited to show me a "computer-based spreadsheet" [2] and how it would do calculations automatically! Even with the computer doing the calculations, he still insisted on double-entry.

[1] I remember visiting a very large room with raised floors; raised so that the cooling system could do it's job properly. I believe he was actually using a DOS system, so my memory of the computers being like big lockers must be of tape-backups or something like that.

[2] i was a wee lad, but if memory serves, it was a predecessor to Lotus 1-2-3

Likely Visicalc [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visicalc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheet#Paper_spreadsheets

I might be misremembering but I'm pretty sure that when reading "Barbarians at the gate", they referred to these eighties' physical worksheets also as spreadsheets. The spreading of the sheet in the table is, in fact more physical than digital...

EDIT: This article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8526319

I liked Joel Spolsky's essay on trello and excel. The basic idea is that excel is mostly used as a simple way to make tables. That it can do calculations is also useful.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/06.html

It depends entirely who's doing the using right? I know my work has terrabytes of excel docs on network drives with calculations. There are doubtless innumerable google docs in the ether with collated responses to questionnaires. There are the checklist spreadsheets Dad had for packing prior to going away.

It takes all sorts :)

I know of companies who use them for holiday hours, conversion calculators etc

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