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Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

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Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#261

Post by lucozade »

intended wrote: post #208
d--b wrote: post #66

Finance dev guy here. Excel's dominance in the field is because it is an _application container_ that _non_ dev people can use. The workflow is this: - old trader guy says to his junior guy: "hey can you look into xxx." - junior trader guy says: "sure I'll make a spreadsheet for it" - old trader guy: "great your model is all I need, let's trade" - several weeks later, IT guy says: "hey you're running a $100m book out…

As unpopular as it would be to say - Stop trying. Excel is a phenomenal accomplishment, and while everyone may talk about a better spread sheet, the market really doesn't want it or need it. Its basically craigslist. The only people who think it can be or needs to be done better are primarily not the users. Excel is the human condition, messy, varied, capable of doing many things and most of the features aren't used,…

> Excel is a phenomenal accomplishment

Couldn't agree more. It's also a huge, latent liability. In my experience, mostly because it's an opaque data store.

To use the parent's example. Turn's out the $100mm business is actually only worth $80mm because someone had accidentally coded GBPUSD directly into the spreadsheet. Before Brexit was announced. Say goodbye to senior trader.

This sort of thing happens though not as much as it used to as we don't allow Excel in the path that hits the ledger.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#262

Post by znpy »

Since were all finally praising Excel for the marvel it is, I think it's also time for the OSS community to realize and acknowledge that OpenOffice/LibreOffice is quite crappy and should really see some serious improvement.

Calc is basically a toy compared to Excel, and this is quite evident once you step out of the basic things.

Anecdotally: a while ago i wanted to live-update a cell in my spreadsheet using python . Nothing fancy, just update the cell with the latest price of bitcoins and see if it's time to sell (at the time bitcoin was at 500$).

I wasted a morning on that thing and I managed to get it working but oh boy I am so ashamed of the code i wrote... Also OpenOffice/LibreOffice APIs are arcane and basically undocumented. Examples are basically non-existing.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#263

Post by ccozan »

uridium wrote: post #240
yosyp wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick google search shows some people are already working on that, including https://www.pathio.com

Schematiq - https://www.schematiq.com also handles source control for spreadsheet and a lot more. The platform is about making sheets enterprise grade applications - regression, testing, CI etc and introduces new features to simplify spreadsheet logic.

I remember I wrote not long ago a VB Macro for Excel, where all the VB code inside was imported/exported, git pull/commit+push, etc, all of a button push.

It became an instant hit in that company and I short of a medal :).

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#264

Post by ccozan »

znpy wrote: post #262

Since were all finally praising Excel for the marvel it is, I think it's also time for the OSS community to realize and acknowledge that OpenOffice/LibreOffice is quite crappy and should really see some serious improvement. Calc is basically a toy compared to Excel, and this is quite evident once you step out of the basic things. Anecdotally: a while ago i wanted to live-update a cell in my spreadsheet using python .…

I actually abandoned all Libre/Openoffice and I moved on Google Sheets. The number of add-ons is growing and I enjoy working in the collaborative mode with my partner.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#265

Post by hardlianotion »

djtriptych wrote: post #177
opportune wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh I doubt most quants are interacting much with Excel except when they need to work with non-quants. There's not much of a reason to use Excel when you could use something like Pandas instead, plus the Python libraries/environment will make everything non-tabled better to deal with anyway.

it's different now but historically quants were not well versed in software engineering. If anything it would have been R 10-15 years ago.

10-15 years ago it was excel excel excel for quants in most investment banks.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#266

Post by TeMPOraL »

Declanomous wrote: post #150
agar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Version control in Excel VBA is easy. Just do a Save As..."Mission Critical Finance Model v2.xlsm", then "Mission Critical Finance Model v3.xlsm", then "Mission Critical Finance Model v3a (temp with changes for Jim).xlsm" and then "Mission Critical Finance Model v4 (maybe-trying to merge 3a back-DO NOT USE).xlsm" and so on...

That's true. Good luck doing anything with that though. My main database was up to version 2051 by the time I left. The class I have nightmares about is the "compile and backup" class I wrote, that decompiled the database, appended the date to each file, compared all of the non-data and non-binary components, recompiled the database with the most recent versions, and then made sure every database was linked to the mo…

> and administrators aren't deliberately evil.

Stories like that, and my experience, tell me that IT staff in large companies and institutions ensure everything works by making it unusable. After all, users won't break stuff if they are not actually using the infrastructure.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#267

Post by bonesss »

intended wrote: post #234
sanityUnbounded wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it makes sense why it works so well. On a 2D screen, seeing data in linear rows and columns is the best option because it follows the same format we have been taught verbatim since birth. The first type of data processing a person does is learn to read. Left to right, each letter (column) represents a different sound (value), these letters build a picture, and the more of them there are the more information the s…

I always pour water on the AR VR user input ideas - The calorific need is too high - and thinking in 3D results in an unnecessary cognitive load. Since this thread probably has more Finance users than usual - most people have seen a bloomberg terminal. Its ugly, and filled with arcane short cuts. Its extremely extremely good at getting its job done, and keyboard short cuts and commands are the fastest system once you…

To bolster you point even further: take something like air-traffic control.

Operators are so in tuned with the incoming data that they intuitively make 3D maps in their head, while requiring 2D data for quick observation, comprehension, and real-time monitoring.

Working in a 3D space makes sense for blocking out movies, exploring physical architectures, or certain kinds of research. For everything else there universe has given us an amazing parallel processor connected to eyes that work really nicely on tabular data.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#268

Post by fzumstein »

yosyp wrote: post #167
toomuchtodo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Excel needs a git extension!

A quick google search shows some people are already working on that, including https://www.pathio.com

Note that Pathio has been relaunched as https://www.xltrail.com - it supports the standard Git workflow and every Git system (GitHub, Bitbucket, Gitlab etc.).

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#269

Post by GFischer »

flukus wrote: post #233
dredmorbius wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Excel is that whilst it's an easy development environment, and a vastly flexible one, it's absolute death to debug. At Uni, decades ago (and using Lotus-1-2-3 rather than Excel), we were given a set of spreadsheet templates for a business management exercise (the project ran much the duration of the course). I discovered looking at these that there was an error in the spreadsheet double-counting all…

> I discovered looking at these that there was an error in the spreadsheet double-counting all inputs (rows and columns were added and the row-totals included in the grand total). Best I can tell, finding that bug was not in fact part of the course goal.... Multiple times I've come across issues like this when developing the replacement for an old access system. The numbers between the new an old system don't match,…

Yep, Excel is an easy way to lose a few million dollars.

However, development costs are so expensive they might have broken even when factoring the cost of creating a system.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#270

Post by GFischer »

blackoil wrote: post #90

Excel is functional, free form and fast. It ain't going anywhere. MS need to fix multi user workflow and add versioning.

I've heard Excel mentioned as the real reason for the Microsoft Office lock-in and cash cow.

Word and PowerPoint can be easily replaced.

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