Two months ago I began contemplating If it could for me, and at first I was pretty pessimistic - partly due to still being within the honeymoon period of macOS Mojave which were everything I had hoped for in an OS upgrade for my mid-2013 MBA.
Fast forward to present day:
Having used my iPhone for 75% of the non-working time/tasks for years I now use it… well, as a phone, when I’m out of the house.
Otherwise, I use the iPad for everything including calls and iMessages/texts.
The only time I give the iPad a rest is during transport as well as - sometimes - during a charge cycle at which times I prefer to use the watch for calls, texts/iMessage, and my iPhone for surfing.
But like most of us here agree, this is a pretty subjective question - no-one is the same or have the same needs or workflows. Some users may have somewhat similar needs or workflows which is why some may find they can optimize their use of an iPad, but it’ll always be a customization of something “nearly-similar-to-what-I-need” kind of workflow.
That’s why the number of articles digging into this question is almost equal to the number of opinions on the matter if you ask me, and why there isn’t a definitive answer other than “YES, it can.” and “No, it can’t”.
It’s kind of like the snake that is swallowing its own tail, really.
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I think you hit the nail on the head here. It seems in my ideal world, the iPad should enable one to be able to do everything one can do on a personal “computer” (I don’t think we should expect it to make Top500’s list of super computers), and it should enable that in ways that are consistent with how one works on an iPad. Then each consumer can decide what machine they want to use and what machine best solves the problem at hand. But in order to do that, each machine (at a minimum) must be able to accomplish all the applicable work. (E.g., it will be great when an iPad can be it’s own self-contained development platform and have it’s own compiler.)
By the way, I already can do about 99.5% of my work on iPad. Most of the delta is a result of software not supporting all the features that I otherwise have available on my desktop. From an efficiency perspective, the only other time I find myself longing for a traditional computer is when I need lots of screens with lots of room to spread around lots of things. But if I had a 13” laptop I’d have that same need, so it’s not an iPad “problem.”. This is why I have my 15” MBP hooked up to a 27” display, and I may pick up another one.
TL;DR: Great comment, @Tonny_Bukdahl
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I absolutely agree and can relate to the 99.5% - for me the only thing really missing is the ability to add CD backup music to the Music library, add 3rd party purchased audiobooks to Books and having same automation functionality as folder actions (for iCloud as well as on-device) for Mac and the calendar launched automation tasks.
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adding music to Music app can be circumvented with an Apple Music subscription (in 99% instances depending on availability of the song/album/artist in Apple Music. Only my own created music (I do some basic mixes from a musician friends music scores) is not able to be added, for now, anyway)
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I often buy audiobooks on Amazon Audible. Previously I would add them to Books via iTunes on Mac since I prefer the Books interface, which unfortunately isn’t possible on iOS
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the calendar launched (and location dependent) automation can be circumvented by using LCP, so, for now, that is a minor nuisance to me
Of course one can always hope that Apple will address these “issues” in a future iOS update (I’m hoping the 13. iteration of iOS will offer a solution) and I think they have to, if they’re serious about offering the iPad as an alternative to “regular” computers - especially for the pro user segment
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Or to generate pivot tables.
I have excel on all my devices but the IOS version is limited. To have the functionality I need on a portable device I have to use the web based version of the software. It takes a lot of screen real estate which is limited on my 9.7 IPad.
I agree, spreadsheets on iPads are not a great experience for two reasons. The interface problem has to be solved. I suppose on Excel if the Apple Pencil did not automatically draw, it might work as well as a mouse. I don’t use Excell deeply enough to have a great sense of that. More importantly, the software itself needs to enable more functionality, like pivot tables and expanding the kinds of formulas you are able to create. I don’t know what aspect of the functionality is limited by iOS and what is limited by Microsoft’s own developers. I suppose a third reason might also be the absence of visual basic, doubtless that is a problem for some people.
I think it’s safe to say that for the time being, if your work tools include significant use of spreadsheets, the iPad is not ready to push your laptop out of the way. Some things you can’t even do. Other things it is significantly less efficient to do on an iPad than on a traditional machine. I’d be curious if anyone has had any success relying primarily or solely on an iPad for their spreadsheet usage.
iOS eschews or obscures much of the complexity found in desktop opertaing systems.
I think this hits the matter dead on the head. It’s like the move from command-line to graphical user interfaces- sure I can type out those commands, but I’d rather just click. With the iPad, you don’t have to think about saving files (unless you want to), moving folders around (unless you want to), or placing apps just so (unless you want to). With a Mac, these things are less optimized for the user that “doesn’t want to” than on the iPad.
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Unfortunately as a software engineer (and a non-Apple one at that), there’s no way I could use anything except a regular computer for work 
I envy the simplicity of every-day iOS/iPadOS usage.
Nope - I have the iPad Pro 12.9” with the keyboard and spreadsheets suck.
If the spreadsheet already exists I can view it, and make small modifications, but it is a painful process. I have mostly worked with Google Sheets (no longer being an Excel user - but I miss it). Nothing like trying to re-size a column while the plane is bumping around. 
I have tried simple worksheets in Numbers. But, I am unfamiliar with Numbers so it does not solve anything for me.
I am waiting to see the improvements with iPadIOS.