「经济学人」Reign of the spreadsheet

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Reign of the spreadsheet Why Microsoft Excel won’t die The business world’s favourite software program enters its 40th year For many, Microsoft Excel is the epitome of corporate drudgery. Its dreaded #VALUE! error has driven an incalculable number of users to despair. Yet among financial analysts, management consultants and even the odd business journalist, the spreadsheet program, which this month entered its 40th year, is a handy tool for everything from interrogating company financials to pricing assets. Satya Nadella, the boss of Microsoft, has called it the “best consumer product” the tech giant ever made. The program even has its own world championship in Las Vegas, where spreadsheet wizards pivot, concatenate and VLOOKUP their way to victory. Excel was not the first spreadsheet for PCs. That honour belongs to VisiCalc (short for visible calculator), built in 1979 by Dan Bricklin, then a student at Harvard Business School. By 1983 a rival program, Lotus 1-2-3, had taken t ………………………………