I didn't read the entire article but the headline reminds me of a programme I use: Treesheets. It's a spreadsheet/note taking app made by a person in the games industry, and I find it really fun to use.

link: https://strlen.com/treesheets/

A few past discussions:

TreeSheets: Free Form Data Organizer (Hierarchical Spreadsheet) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47654219 - April 2026 (1 comment)

TreeSheets: Open Source Free Form Data Organizer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34184993 - Dec 2022 (55 comments)

Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27614912 - June 2021 (90 comments)

TreeSheets: Free Form Data Organizer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15057392 - Aug 2017 (58 comments)

TreeSheets: Free-Form Data Organizer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11247372 - March 2016 (28 comments)

That looks like an interesting program. I can hardly believe I’d never heard of it before—and it’s in the Debian repository, too.

wow. thank-you. i'd never heard of it, and it is a thing of beauty.