Editing Spreadsheet (section)

=== End-user development ===
Spreadsheets are a popular [[end-user development]] tool.<ref name="Empowering Users">{{cite web|url=http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/08/empowering-users-to-create-their-own-software.php|title=Empowering Users to Create Their Software|author=Peter Hornsby}}</ref> EUD denotes activities or techniques in which people who are not professional developers create automated behavior and complex data objects without significant knowledge of a programming language. Many people find it easier to perform calculations in spreadsheets than by writing the equivalent sequential program. This is due to several traits of spreadsheets.
*They use [[Space|spatial]] relationships to define program relationships. Humans have highly developed [[intuition (knowledge)|intuitions]] about spaces, and of dependencies between items. Sequential programming usually requires typing line after line of text, which must be read slowly and carefully to be understood and changed.
*They are forgiving, allowing partial results and functions to work. One or more parts of a program can work correctly, even if other parts are unfinished or broken. This makes writing and debugging programs easier, and faster. Sequential programming usually needs every program line and character to be correct for a program to run. One error usually stops the whole program and prevents any result. Though this user-friendliness is a benefit of spreadsheet development, it often comes with an increased risk of errors.
*Modern spreadsheets allow for [[secondary notation]]. The program can be annotated with colors, typefaces, lines, etc. to provide visual cues about the meaning of elements in the program.
*Extensions that allow users to create new functions can provide the capabilities of a [[functional language]].<ref name="excel">{{cite web | title=Improving the world's most popular functional language: user-defined functions in Excel | first1=Simon | last1=Peyton Jones |author-link1=Simon Peyton Jones |first2=Margaret |last2=Burnett|author2-link=Margaret Burnett |first3=Alan |last3=Blackwell |author-link3=Alan Blackwell | url=http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/Papers/excel/index.htm |date=March 2003 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051016011341/http://research.microsoft.com/~simonpj/Papers/excel/index.htm |archive-date=2005-10-16}}</ref>
*Extensions that allow users to build and apply models from the domain of [[machine learning]].<ref name=spreadsheet_machinelearning>{{cite book|last1=Sarkar|first1=Advait|last2=Blackwell|first2=Alan|last3=Jamnik|first3=Mateja|last4=Spott|first4=Martin|title=2014 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) |chapter=Teach and try: A simple interaction technique for exploratory data modelling by end users |pages=53–56|doi=10.1109/VLHCC.2014.6883022|year=2014|isbn=978-1-4799-4035-6|citeseerx=10.1.1.695.2025|s2cid=14845341}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|date=2015-10-01|pages=159–163|doi=10.1109/VLHCC.2015.7357211|first1=A.|last1=Sarkar|first2=M.|last2=Jamnik|first3=A.F.|last3=Blackwell|first4=M.|last4=Spott|title=2015 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) |chapter=Interactive visual machine learning in spreadsheets |isbn=978-1-4673-7457-6|s2cid=17659755}}</ref>
*Spreadsheets are versatile. With their [[Boolean logic]] and graphics capabilities, even [[electronic circuit design]] is possible.<ref name="haynes1985fall">{{cite news | url=https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1985-11/1985_11_BYTE_10-11_Inside_the_IBM_PCs#page/n145/mode/2up | title=Circuit Design with Lotus 1-2-3 | work=BYTE | date=Fall 1985 | access-date=19 March 2016 | author=Haynes, John L. | pages=143–156}}</ref>
* Spreadsheets can store [[relational model|relational data]] and spreadsheet formulas can express all queries of [[SQL]]. There exists a query translator, which automatically generates the spreadsheet implementation from the SQL code.<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Translating Relational Queries into Spreadsheets|journal=IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering|date=2015-02-02|volume=27|issue=8|pages=1041–4347|doi=10.1109/TKDE.2015.2397440|first1=J.|last1=Sroka|first2=A.|last2=Panasiuk|first3=K.|last3=Stencel|first4=J.|last4=Tyszkiewicz|arxiv=1305.2103|s2cid=13415694}}</ref>