This post from a self-described "old version Excel guy" captures exactly why traditional spreadsheets feel like a dead end. The formula he's wrestling with is a monster, twenty iterations of nested VSTACK, HSTACK, IF, INDEX, and FILTER, all to do something that should be simple: pull related rows based on a changing reference. He's asking if new functions like LET or SEQUENCE can trim it down. The honest answer is yes, but the better answer is that he shouldn't have to ask.
What this user is doing is perfectly logical. He's using BA2 as a counter, subtracting 1, then 2, then all the way to 20, to retrieve headers from AY and AZ and then filter AP:AW where AW matches those headers. The repetition is the problem. Each iteration is essentially the same operation with a different offset. LET could store that offset logic once. SEQUENCE could generate the offsets automatically. But even then, the formula stays brittle, change the number of iterations and you're back to editing 20 blocks. The real transformation isn't a shorter formula; it's a smarter one.
AI-native tools don't make you count iterations. They let you describe the pattern. You say "for each value in this list, find matching rows and stack them," and the tool handles the loop. The user's current approach treats the spreadsheet like a manual assembly line, where every repetition is a new line of code. That's not a skill issue, it's a tool limitation. The new functions help, but they're bandaids on a design that assumes you'll always be the one doing the heavy lifting.
Our take is plain: if you're spending time writing formulas that repeat the same logic twenty times, you've outgrown the tool. The solution isn't a better formula. It's a tool that understands repetition as a concept, not a chore. This user is ready for that shift. He's already asking the right questions, he just needs a tool that answers them without making him write the question twenty times.