alt Hacker News> non-programmers began programming without knowing they were
Using excel in the traditional sense isn't the same as programming. Unless they were doing some VBA or something like that which the vast majority of excel/spreadsheet users don't.
> spreadsheet formulae
formulas. We aren't speaking latin here.
> I see an analog with AI-generated code: the disciplined among us know we are programming and consider error and edge cases, the rest don't.
Programming isn't really about edge cases or errors.
Replies
> formulas. We aren't speaking latin here.
Define "here", please! Perhaps your "here" and mine differ, but the view from my here is that while all three plurals are generally acceptable, formulae is the correcter double plus good spelling for this context.
Excel was the biggest example of a "4GL" that actually succeeded. They mentioned Access but Excel was by far more widely used. Excel enabled analysts to do so much on their own that they used to have to ask programmers in their IT department to do. Other spreadsheets too, at first, but Excel ended up dominating.