I don’t think this evaluation is especially useful, because it only presents one side of the argument. Why spreadsheets are bad, not their advantages or how errors typically occur in programming languages.
The bottom line you present (quoted below) is in fact not very action relevant. It’s not strong enough to even support that the switching costs are worth it IMO.
We are far from certain that writing cost-effectiveness analyses in an ordinary programming language would reduce the error rate compared to spreadsheets—quantitative estimates of the error rate in both spreadsheets and in non-spreadsheet programs find error rates on the same order of magnitude. The mix of problems that are typically approached using these two types of tools is different though, and we have not found an apples-to-apples study of those error rates.
I don’t think this evaluation is especially useful, because it only presents one side of the argument. Why spreadsheets are bad, not their advantages or how errors typically occur in programming languages.
The bottom line you present (quoted below) is in fact not very action relevant. It’s not strong enough to even support that the switching costs are worth it IMO.
Totally agree with the need for a more balanced and careful analysis!