Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 435 posts

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#291

Post by beached_whale »

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…

Many of the larger businesses I have seen(not too many) have a disconnect between the subject matter experts that use Excel to codify their knowledge and the developers. The program(Excel workbook) often isn't big enough to warrant the dev costs when it works "now" but is too important not to in the long run.

I do think this is a tooling issue that could generate code based on Excel workbooks.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#292

Post by eighthnate »

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…

> I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel.

I wouldn't say Excel is a programming language - unless you are referring to VBA attached to excel. Excel is a spreadsheet application. It's no more a programming language than Microsoft Word is a programming language.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#293

Post by sheetjs »

jstandard wrote: post #216
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…

> 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 com…

Excel is an incredible swiss army knife when dealing with one person in one location on one computer, but the warts start showing up when any of those assumptions break.

One computer: once you decide you want to use your smartphone, for all but the most basic sheets there are problems with Excel mobile preview, even with Microsoft's official apps.

One location: Excel's lack of a universal time (showing different times in for users in different timezones) have led to gnarly workarounds. There was an attempt to correct for it in the XLSX format (cell type 'd') but it has its own problems.

One person: Excel has no inherent sync strategy. You are forced to farm out to email (and the inherent filename versioning nonsense) or use a system like SharePoint (which has its own problems you notice when dealing with people in different timezones across the world, like accidental file locking and data loss)

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#294

Post by posterboy »

Robotbeat wrote: post #174
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…

Completely agree. It's common to tell kids (and everyone) that they need to "learn to code." That is what Excel already is! And it's incredibly powerful, especially if you don't have any other coding skills. But, of course, it's messy. When tens of millions of people can each write their own programs and easily modify them and change them to suit their own needs without needing to recompile or anything, then you get…

Stands to reason that "everyone" is coding wrong. You wouldn't say people are programming just because natural language is turing complete, or because they are while physics is turing complete. One important aspect of information is structure, but programming classes at the low level merely teach syntax. So I'm thinking that therefore spreadsheets are unstructured. Sure that's elitist or at least academic - in comparison to amateurish.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#295

Post by eighthnate »

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…

> The phrases "avoid data silos" and "we want single source of truth" have been used repeatedly about Excel misuse/abuse/overuse for 20+ years.

Yep. Even if they get centralize data via RDBMs like SQL Server or even god forbid Microsoft Access, office workers are going to want the front-end of that data to be excel.

There is too much knowledge investment in excel for many office workers to want to switch.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#296

Post by cjlars »

Put simply, Excel is excellent as a terminal node in any data pipeline, but poor as an intermediate node. Open speadsheet -> human plays with data -> human makes decision = good. Open spreadsheet -> human plays with data -> automated process pulls data further along in data pipeline = bad.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#297

Post by posterboy »

Robotbeat wrote: post #174
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…

Completely agree. It's common to tell kids (and everyone) that they need to "learn to code." That is what Excel already is! And it's incredibly powerful, especially if you don't have any other coding skills. But, of course, it's messy. When tens of millions of people can each write their own programs and easily modify them and change them to suit their own needs without needing to recompile or anything, then you get…

have you tried to do scientific plots with Excel? I only tried libre calc, which admittedly might lack behind in a couple regards, but it's nigh impossible, no compare to scripting.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#298

Post by EpicEng »

laythea wrote: post #264
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…

Maybe I did not appreciate it properly, but I remember using Lotus Notes at my work a few years ago, and I can remember it being the most awful piece of software I have ever used. Admittingly I am not a specialist, more an employee trying to use it to do my job.

It is, you're not wrong

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#299

Post by otakucode »

sheetjs wrote: post #110
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…

Excel is simultaneously flexible enough to solve a wide array of problems and structured enough to enable larger tasks like slicing and filtering data. This article is trying to push for cloud-based silos that solve specific problems, but most of them fall apart in "real-world" scenarios because they aren't flexible enough to support the ad-hoc workflows people have developed over years.

The dystopia that I fear is an endless gauntlet of powerless employees droning 'the computer doesn't have a field for that' or 'the computer won't let me do that'. We already seem perilously close to this, putting the consistency of systems ostensibly built to serve the needs of society over and above the needs of society.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#300

Post by ggg9990 »

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…

A nice quote but getting data between SaaS apps is much harder than between Excel sheets, and modifying a SaaS app with that one little thing you need for your particular case is of course impossible.
Post reply on HN