But at the same time, there is a saying in user experience design: don't blame the user.

At least at the time of the article, there was no way to disable the auto-conversion of certain strings (like "SEPT2") into dates. A setting to disable this would have stopped many errors amplified by researchers working late at night or rushing to meet a deadline.

It's true that there has to be some point where the users of the tool need to put in the effort to learn how to best use it. But effort poured in from the other end by the developers, too, can go a long way to prevent common errors and save users time.

A poor worker blames their tools, but no-one can write the Bible on a stamp with a carrot...

Again, this saying has a nuance people often miss.

You don’t blame your tools.

Not all tools. Not tools forced upon by some archaic industrial standard or habit. Not stupid tools you’d never use otherwise but have no choice.

Excel has many quirks, but I'm still very grateful that it exists, for quickly putting together some numbers and still being able to change the inputs to my formulas.

That’s nice, but Excel didn’t invent spreadsheets. It invented adding BS to them and if it didn’t exist, you’d still have WhateverCalc successor available at the moment.

I think what you mean here is that you are grateful that spreadsheet applications exist.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheet

In Polish we have: a bad ballerina is hindered by the hem of her skirt

In Arabic, “the one who can’t dance says the floor is crooked”

A bad dancer finds even his ballsack annoying.

As a native English speaker, I've actually only heard 'a bad workman blames his tools', not the artist form. Now that I google it, did you mean craftsman? I don't see any references to artist.