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The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

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Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#191

Post by clausok »

intended wrote: post #123
css wrote: post #5

I do not understand the mindset of not wanting to help other people. Enabling people to learn more about the software they use every day is better for everyone involved. Yes, some problems are too complex to solve in a few minutes, but pointing someone in the right direction requires little to no effort. Excel lacks the community programmers have and also lacks the learning opportunities given by open-source software…

>Excel lacks the community programmers have and also lacks the learning opportunities given by open-source software. Source needed. There’s crap tons of excel help, and the amount of excel queries+answers will easily put other languages to shame. The difference is that excel is not usually treated as an engineering tool, with the various rituals that go with it. In contrast, take a look at how financial analysts lear…

>excel is not usually treated as an engineering tool

This is a good point. I've seen C# & Python devs who read the release notes and adopt new features of C#\Python with alacrity while at the same time their Excel development work, which they spend considerable time on, evolves not at all. E.g., still using IF(ISERROR(...)) rather than IFERROR; VLOOKUP rather than INDEX(MATCH()); slow & brittle array functions rather than SUMIFS; employing many intermediate columns to clean out errors rather than using AGGREGATE(); doing things in VBA that they would never do in their primary programming language (v = Worksheets("pnl").Range("N22:N77").Value).

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#193

Post by codazoda »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #160
daveslash wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory Comment: "Excel as a Database" by Rory Blyth, circa early 2000's. "As a developer, you've probably, at some unfortunate point in your life (possibly several points, actually), been handed an Excel file that has been crammed full of 'data' by someone in marketing and told to 'do something with it.' " http://wyorock.com/excelasadatabase.htm

As a developer, what should I do if I actually want to do that? Because I get a lot of satisfaction out of massaging messy wads of data into a clean, uniform, accessible form. Is there a job title or something I should look for?

The Analytics team at my company does this. ETL's we call them (Export, Transform, Load). Some of us are app devs and some are data analysts; there's cross-over. We do other things too, but moving data between systems is a big part of it.

As for job titles; Software Engineer (or Developer) of Analytics, Data Analyst, Data Scientist, or something along those lines. Probably varies by company.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#194

Post by froindt »

samspenc wrote: post #55

I've always wondered: these clunky Excel sheets are used at billion-dollar companies. Why don't they invest in building a sane web application (or similar) that can do all the validation and calculations in a much better looking interface that is suited for the job / application?

>Why don't they invest in building a sane web application (or similar) that can do all the validation and calculations in a much better looking interface that is suited for the job / application?

Inertia, training cost, and risk of failure.

1 year ago I made a very extensive spreadsheet to analyze planned production and forecasts at a factory. It took about 6 months after the logic was thoroughly vetted to transition it into an IT supported auto-update to a database as the primary project for 1 IT analyst. No pretty front end to modify production parameters or anything like that. If we transitioned any earlier, it would have been the typical "our user keeps changing the scope and logic of the application we're trying to build for them".

This was probably the best way things could have reasonably gone. No long term spreadsheet usage, spreadsheet had good documentation, used tables, names ranges to make the formulas easy to read, etc.

Excel can do a decent job at figuring out the required logic. But it is used as an everything tool where task specific applications would be best. And people only know enough to be dangerous

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#195

Post by schwinn »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #88
guelo wrote: post #72

People say "use a real database", fine, but where is the visual data entry? Where are the easy adhoc reports? Where are the forms? I guess if you're on Windows you can use Microsoft Access, but that's the only accesible tool I know of that doesn't require a team of programmers or an enterprise license for some Oracle/SAP type monstrosity.

Just use airtable, its like microsoft access but easier to use and pickup. Or just use google forms + google spreadsheets

Actually, I struggled making the transition to airtable from excel. Do you have recommendations for training? I do want to learn it, maybe no to a mastery level, but proficient

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#196

Post by debaserab2 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #181
debaserab2 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always looked at it as being great job security.

"You haven't completed any of your assignments while your co-workers all exhibit improved productivity. For this reason, I'm giving you a poor performance review."

Never once seen it play out like that. Most people understand that your work comes before the help they need.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#197

Post by just_myles »

pmiller2 wrote: post #190
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a thing a few months back about some Western game developers collaborating with Japanese counterparts for the first time, and their biggest surprise was that a whole lot of game data is stored in an Excel file during development. If you want to change an enemy's stats or a physics parameter, you don't dig through config files with a text editor, you just pull up the spreadsheet. Reportedly it made a lot of twe…

I don’t understand how editing a number in an excel file is any easier than editing a number in a text file. What was it that made the difference?

I agree. Text file edit seems much quicker.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#199

Post by jjeaff »

lucidguppy wrote: post #155
lozaning wrote: post #129

If we're sharing awesome excel videos, You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky has to be among the best I've ever seen. Joel, being on the team that made excel, has an incredible amount of excel knowledge. The video is meant to be in the same vein as the You Suck at Photoshop videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c

You get a perceived performance boost when you get a keyboard with a sonorous click.

Ya, I never get comments anymore on how fast I type now that I switched to a chicklet style keyboard from my mechanical. You can still hear the clicking, but it doesn't sound nearly as fast.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#200

Post by pq0ak2nnd »

Bishonen88 wrote: post #113
OskarS wrote: post #86

You know who's awesome at Excel? Martin Shkreli. You know, the Wall Street asshole who's in jail now? A while back, someone told me "hey, dude, there are these videos on YouTube where Martin Shkreli uses Excel, and they're fucking magic. It's like the first time you watched someone who's really good at Vim. " It's true: [0]. Say what you will about that little heartless douchebag, he's fucking awesome at using Excel.…

Does being good at excel mean that one knows the shortcuts of navigation? The video indeed showed that Martin knew his ALT+, CTRL+ etc., but is that what differentiates an excel pro from a newbie? I thought that 'knowing' excel goes much deeper than the navigational shortcuts: solver, array formulas, powerpivot, vba etc. etc. - this is what I'd call more sophisticated excel features. If someone clicks the number form…

In my 25+ years of using Excel, here's what makes a pro:

1. Someone who knows how to use two dimensional TABLE()s and vector functions. 2. Someone who can implement an imperative convergence (such as Newton/Raphson or non-plug-in goal seek) 3. Someone who can audit their dependencies and not shit out dozens of unused vars 4. Someone who knows the limit is 10 sheets and 20MB. :)

Visual Basic and shortcuts do not a pro make. VB makes Excel =less= usable, IMHO because now there is an extra dimension to debugging that requires understand each Macro and what it touches: it breaks the entire philosophy of show formulas + auditing.

Yes, this sounds like /r/iamverysmart and /r/gatekeeping, but I'll own that.

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