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

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

#351

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 9:52 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #269

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.…

>>You know, the Wall Street ... who's in jail now? He is a seriously misunderstood figure. Have watched his YouTube videos too, not just the investment class but also his working sessions. Sure his excel skills are legendary. But I learned a lot from him about skills, learning and mastery. Merely watching him work not only motivated me. But gave me tremendous perspective on time, its utility to life and how skills an…

> This guy has legendary skills in investing world

No, he doesn’t. He seems clever, but is clearly a sociopath. He has very few winners on his books, all of which were high-vol high-beta bets in a bull market, and almost wiped out his fund in a short period of time. There are so many better investing role models than Shkreli.

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

#352

Post by incompatible » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 10:34 AM UTC

pq0ak2nnd wrote: post #200

Bishonen88 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Before you get anywhere near this point, why not just use a real database and programming language?

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

#353

Post by liftbigweights » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 10:50 AM UTC

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.…

Please watch your language. And like most things, shrekli wasn't as evil as the media paints him out to be and equally, he wasn't as great as his supporters think he is.

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

#354

Post by icantdrive55 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 11:17 AM UTC

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.…

[dead]

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

#355

Post by wirrbel » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 11:19 AM UTC

Rainymood wrote: post #342

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.…

>little heartless douchebag Steal money from poor people? No problem, just a small fine. Steal money from rich people? Off to jail you go. I'm not saying that what Martin Shkreli did was right, i.e. he did not go to jail for raising the prices on medicine (for which he had good reasons). He went to jail for lying to investors in a sort of Ponzi scheme using new investments to pay off old debts.

He had reasons. I think the reason is called greed. Whether or not you consider greed a good reason is your call.

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

#356

Post by ultrabenos » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 11:19 AM UTC

The first rule of Excel is to expect immense frustration.

Named ranges and tables can't be used as conditional formatting targets, Excel just converts them to absolute cell references right before your eyes. Even if you use INDIRECT.

Most formula errors result in #N/A, a generic error which never has anything remotely useful in the Excel help articles. You have to waste time searching keyword by keyword until you accidentally get the right combination to display relevant SO or obscure forum links from over 3 years ago.

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

#357

Post by unsignedint » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 11:27 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #58

Loughla wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a career educator, and ruling out learning disabilities that are not appropriately accommodated, I believe that generally means you're not doing a good job of explaining in a way the other person is capable of grasping. Blame goes both ways. And the original point still stands. It is productive to teach someone to improve their own processes.

One difference between your experiences as an educator and the parent's experiences as an Office Excel Guy is that educators have a position of authority, and there is generally an ethos of paying attention and trying to remember what they're telling you!

Educators tend to have alignment on students' skill levels too, and perhaps not so with "Excel support." It's actually easier to help someone who knows nothing about the subject. What I struggled in the past are those who think they know what they are doing, yet require help in narrower scope.

They often have often accumulated bad habit, and won't listen to you because "I have been doing this way for years."

Also, it's interesting to observe that many who struggle in Excel (or many of "consumer" applications) actually are struggling in basic computing skills. (e.g. can't tell difference between left and right mouse buttons, don't know how to copy files, etc.) It often result in infuriated people, pointing out that they need to learn basics of the operating system.

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

#358

Post by laurent123456 » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 11:29 AM UTC

incompatible wrote: post #352

pq0ak2nnd wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Before you get anywhere near this point, why not just use a real database and programming language?

Db and programming language will give you a backend. You'll still need a front end to display the info, and Excel is great at that. Not to mention you can send an Excel file by email, but you can't just send Docker containers to your clients and colleagues to run your spreadsheet.

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

#359

Post by viraptor » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 11:40 AM UTC

1000units wrote: post #338

viraptor wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is out of line. It's one thing to be angry at a person, another to wish bad things on their family/children who likely had no part is the issue.

Any time we find ourselves benefactors of evil, we must advocate against it and thank anyone who may have explained to us where we stand.

Advocating against bad actions is different than going homeless because your parents did something wrong. You can't assume that they didn't and can't assume they deserve any punishment for what their parents do.

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

#360

Post by pitay » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 11:49 AM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #158

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.

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…

Text files or Excel for the game data?

Pardon my ignorance, but why aren't they using some sort of database for the data? Or at least storing the data in some sort of master database and exporting it to text files for the game to read? It would be lovely to hear the techniques and reasons from anyone in the know.