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Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

wsj.com

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Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#211

Post by guiomie »

jasode wrote: post #22

The phrases "avoid data silos" and "we want single source of truth" have been used repeatedly about Excel misuse/abuse/overuse for 20+ years. The WSJ story talks about the complaint but not about the underlying tension between data redundancy vs data manipulation. Excel endures because it's the non-programmer's REPL for data. Like a Lisp REPL, using Excel is nimble and has an instant feedback loop. Click "A-Z" to sor…

"One middle ground between Excel data silos and the utopia of a centralized system is a shared document store like Sharepoint or Dropbox." ... 100% agree, and add I find that Google Sheet is the best for this role: 1 source of truth, modification history, read/write permissions and shareable. I am now starting to use spreadsheets for use cases I would have strongly objected in the past. I'm surprised Google sheet isn't more mainstream.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#212

Post by barrkel »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #165
sheetjs wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my career in business software has still mostly been about converting spreadsheets into more "proper" applications. Still true for many people in 2017. @patio11 probably said it best: > Every spreadsheet shared in a business is an angel announcing another SaaS app still needs to be built. https://twitter.com/patio11/status/655674551615942657 FWIW we ended up in business software after one of our open source librari…

No. An domain-specific SaaS app takes all the power away from the people writing their spreadsheet programs. Only one app is needed, a hosted spreadsheet with backup and versioning an replication. The only domain-specific business is in writing plugins.

There's a reason chefs don't use multi-tools; purpose-built tools always beat generic tools when you need to maximize efficiency on a task.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#213

Post by ZenoArrow »

linearithmic wrote: post #188

One reason why Excel should never be used for anything real is because it lacks type safety. For example if you have to sum a columns of numbers and one of them was mistakenly input as text, rather than throwing an error, it will just ignore that entry. There are lots of other problems related to type safety as well.

For example if you have to sum a columns of numbers and one of them was mistakenly input as text, rather than throwing an error, it will just ignore that entry.

There are ways around that. Here's something I just put together as an example:

=EXACT(COUNT(A2:A6),COUNTA(A2:A6))

That will only return true if all the cells in range A2:A6 contain numbers.

There are other approaches that would work, if that doesn't suit you.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#214

Post by pcsanwald »

When I worked at a large investment bank we spent a ton of time and effort on a system that allowed equity analysts to use excel and sync their data back and forth to the firm's centralized system. it was a great approach because it kept the analysts happy, who were all masterful excel users and thus very efficient and happy with it.

Joel Spolsky's essay "Controlling Your Environment Makes You Happy" comes to mind.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#215

Post by ZenoArrow »

fragsworth wrote: post #156

Just something I discovered recently that entirely takes care of the problem if you have ONE PERSON who knows how to code: Google Sheets with the IMPORTHTML() function. You host a web server that runs Python or PHP or whatever and it queries and pulls data from any number of places, and dumps the information to CSV. Then in the Google Doc, you request the data from your server with the IMPORTHTML function. It populat…

Just FYI, Excel has that too. Check the 'Get Data' options under the Data tab.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#216

Post by jstandard »

sheetjs wrote: post #147
ajlburke wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be a Lotus Notes specialist, and one interesting thing I noticed is that from the earliest versions it was designed specifically to be a "step up" from a spreadsheet (Lotus of course also made Lotus 1-2-3, which was the original killer-app spreadsheet before Excel took over). Notes still let you see data as rows and columns and had very spreadsheet-like functions, many of which could be transferred directly…

> my career in business software has still mostly been about converting spreadsheets into more "proper" applications. Still true for many people in 2017. @patio11 probably said it best: > Every spreadsheet shared in a business is an angel announcing another SaaS app still needs to be built. https://twitter.com/patio11/status/655674551615942657 FWIW we ended up in business software after one of our open source librari…

> Every spreadsheet shared in a business is an angel announcing another SaaS app still needs to be built.

It's a pithy quote, you'll get a very different reaction from a finance or small to med-sized business professional.

Excel is the ultimate maker studio that actually lives up to the promise of "build your own mini-app". I'm not saying it can't be improved on. It's just that the core model of flexibility is so compelling, pushing everyone into a SaaS app is invariably going to take away substantial power from the user.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#217

Post by accatyyc »

jpindar wrote: post #172
Sean1708 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the business people can at least modify the Excel I'm not convinced that's a good thing. If they can change the Excel then they can also fuck up the system, and if you fuck up a system like this then it's horrendously difficult to unfuck. I think systems like this look great when they're working, but the second they go tits up you realise why people are horrified by them.

Especially since the people who do this generally don't use version control.

They do use version control. They put each version in a folder named after the date

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#218

Post by Jesus_Jones »

peatmoss wrote: post #190
fjsolwmv wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. An domain-specific SaaS app takes all the power away from the people writing their spreadsheet programs. Only one app is needed, a hosted spreadsheet with backup and versioning an replication. The only domain-specific business is in writing plugins.

I agree that purpose-specific tools aren't the answer, unless the question was, "can I have a straight jacket?" Flip side, my feeling is that, if an analysis was worth doing, it's probably worth doing right. And to do it right, it should probably be done in a way that one can show their work. I like where the R community in particular has gone in dropping the barrier to reproducible analysis to roughly the same place…

My friend's startup has a project that matches up with a lot of these requirements, called Coda. It's easy to query data and build visualizations, has a spreadsheet data model, and has an easier programming model. Excel did a great job getting people to "program" their spreadsheets though.

I also wonder about google sheets capabilities. It does work so well for many people working on one spreadsheet, except for undo. The major flaw I've seen is undo, because in google sheets it was global undo, not personal undo.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#219

Post by gordonguthrie »

mabbo wrote: post #18

I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel. But few of the people using it realize they're programming. It's a brilliant reactive data programming model that makes intuitive sense to non-technical users. They feel empowered to use it to solve problems right now with a computer. They experiment with it, try things, Google how to do more things- just like any programmer does. And they feel…

https://vimeo.com/42266454

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#220

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #169
mabbo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I like to explain functional programming to developers today. When you say "Functional Programming", a lot of devs think "scary complicated thing". When you say "Basic excel spreadsheets" they go "anyone can do that!".

Excel is a very limited form of functional programming. It's sort of SIMD and it eschews side effects, but it has no first class functions which is extremely frustrated and -non-functional

Perhaps a better term is declarative?
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