Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
11–20 of 317 posts
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#12Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#13Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
People are wedded to Excel because they've spent a lot of time learning it and don't want their skills to become obsolete. The resistance is rooted in psychological / political reasons, not technical ones.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#14edit: I entire a whole.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#15So they can apply their business and process knowledge to create tables and formulas, pull data from various sources, and create something that is self-contained, stored locally (inside the lan, security reasons), is blazing fast, and helps them make money and generate profits for the company.
I've seen very sophisticated OMSs (Order Management Systems) built completely using excel workbooks, with 1 sheet containing orders and formula's to pull realtime pricing from bloomberg, reuters, another sheet for pre-trade analysis, another for the actual trades, and a summary sheet with pivot tables and charts to show the trade progress and summary.
As and when the last_price changes, the formulas update, so the trader is looking at a real-time view of his situation.
The same excel workbook that let's the traders do their job would take months / years to convert to a web app, and even then, the speed may not match up.
I know devs hate Excel, in part, because you are the "IT guy" they call (been there many times) when the spreadsheet gets out of hand, or slows down, or keeps crashing excel after a certain inflection point.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#16One huge reason why Finance pros in general, and Fund Managers, Brokers, Traders in particular, love Microsoft Excel is because all your formulas and calculations update almost instantly (unless you explicitly disable this feature). So they can apply their business and process knowledge to create tables and formulas, pull data from various sources, and create something that is self-contained, stored locally (inside t…
Excel is the most powerful REPL in the finance industry, and it's ubiquitous.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#17One huge reason why Finance pros in general, and Fund Managers, Brokers, Traders in particular, love Microsoft Excel is because all your formulas and calculations update almost instantly (unless you explicitly disable this feature). So they can apply their business and process knowledge to create tables and formulas, pull data from various sources, and create something that is self-contained, stored locally (inside t…
EDIT: I like a lot of the responses here. They clearly illustrate the disconnect between end users and IT/devs in many companies.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#18Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
People are wedded to Excel because they've spent a lot of time learning it and don't want their skills to become obsolete. The resistance is rooted in psychological / political reasons, not technical ones.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#19Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
There are semiconductor fabs running most of their machinery on Windows XP for the foreseeable future.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#20One huge reason why Finance pros in general, and Fund Managers, Brokers, Traders in particular, love Microsoft Excel is because all your formulas and calculations update almost instantly (unless you explicitly disable this feature). So they can apply their business and process knowledge to create tables and formulas, pull data from various sources, and create something that is self-contained, stored locally (inside t…
Someone on HN said this once, and I found it profound and have stolen it: Excel is the most powerful REPL in the finance industry, and it's ubiquitous.