Spreadsheets are often mentioned here as an example of a well-accepted user interface to computing. Six tips for better spreadsheets illustrates the conflicts between the human and the computer view of data in spreadsheets in the context of scientific data analysis.

I feel like Airtable captures this pretty well (like Access before it).

Then Airtable takes one step towards forcing the user to adapt to the computer. Which is perhaps the right thing to do.

I suppose that's true, and it does remove the free form grid in which you can type in anything you like. If you look at traditional programming, Excel is more like a text editor, and Airtable is more like a structured editor.

Bahlai recommends that users make their original spreadsheet a read-only document and work on copies, so that they can start over if necessary.

Both too true and feels so uncomfortable somehow.