I have not looked into Coda yet, but have a few observations on the user / programmer divide.<p>To me, spreadsheets are just another programming paradigm. I have seen business users build impressive things using Excel (excluding here VBA). I'd even say that in terms of raw productivity (i.e., just in terms of business problems solved over time, without any consideration for maintainability etc), the spreadsheet paradigm is vastly superior to the regular textual programming paradigm – as long as the problem is simple enough. And most of normal business is dead simple.<p>As soon as the process or problem hits a certain complexity, the Excel solution becomes painful to use, understand and change.
I believe this is in part specifically fault of the tool - while Microsoft has been doing a great job in terms of power user features (Power Query, PowerPivot), they have apparently not been willing to extend the spreadsheet paradigm itself to meet the requirements we demand from business software, which is a pity and missed opportunity.<p>Secondly, what I have also observed is that most users, even users building complex workbooks, are not willing to make the jump to textual programming (e.g., VBA). I think programming in general requires a high level of frustration tolerance that most people are not willing to bring up except when they really have to (e.g., to use Excel, which is basically unavoidable in 99% of businesses).<p>To summarize, there is still room to come up with a system that makes building simple things as simple as Excel, while being flexible enough that it scales to meet production software requirements.