>But millions of people can autonomously resort to this, and they would be incapable of doing anything with a SQLite file.
Are you trying to suggest that either you can't do that with sqlite, or that people didn't require training to do this in Excel?
harperlee: open list of affordances that an average user comfortably identifies with an Excel file, not really with sqlite
sofixa: version and comparison is not really supported in Excel
harperlee: agree that software support is not there, but in practice average user knows how to do it and is quite comfortable doing it in Excel
btreecat: sqlite also has filenames and you can learn how to use it
harperlee: agree on the filename, Excel files and sqlite files are externally, opaquely versionable in the same way. the point about people learning is moot though, average user already knows Excel because they were forced to in the past, but does not have the time to learn new things.
Yes, that's horrible. But millions of people can autonomously resort to this, and they would be incapable of doing anything with a SQLite file.
Same with version control: you just add _v17_20230909_final to the name. Yes, it's horrible. Yes, it's buggy. But yes, it also runs the world.