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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

#401

Post by HyperTalk2 »

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.…

Why do you people always feel the need to make statements about Shkreli, Trump, etc. in a format like "he's an asshole, but X"?

Why not just say X?

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

#402

Post by jtloong »

edraferi wrote: post #383
incompatible wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because there’s too much overhead, it’s too hard to share, and the benefits don’t show up until the problem is more complex than most people ever need.

I mean with a Python and Jupyter Notebook workflow it is incredibly easy to share the work and understand what's going on if there's base level of knowledge.

All the simple formula stuff and basic data handling (using Pandas) would be incredibly easy to learn for pros at Excel.

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

#403

Post by HyperTalk2 »

1000units wrote: post #396
viraptor wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a man does terrible things to support his family, the inevitable destruction of his family falls on his head. Not the other people he ripped off.

It's pointless to ask any of these peanut gallery NPCs where they keep their 1.6 million dollars, because their milquetoast "peace and love, maaaan" world view guarantees they will never have what it takes to earn such an amount in the first place.

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

#404

Post by zer00eyz »

sk5t wrote: post #293
zer00eyz wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a story that may amuse you. Recently I worked on a contract doing some data ingestion that the resident team didn't want to deal with. They had been provided a JSON api to get what should have been a batch file. The owner/api creator said "this is good enough we won't accommodate you." So much for sensible data transmission and batch processing. Because I have had to deal with these sorts of things before I ha…

What do you mean by "batch file"? Surely not a .bat.

Yes the end result in most cases is good old CSV -

repeated variable names are bloat when getting lots of data, extra formatting is the same... CSV's are great for getting these things down.

As another poster pointed out (S)FTP is the way to go when sending CSV's, and they are compressed in most cases to save storage and data transmission on both ends.

I am old enough to remember when mailing a hard disc or a tape might be a faster way to move a LOT Of data. The practice is still alive and well, but the option is now by the "truckload"

https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/

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

#405

Post by konradx »

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…

I Excel at this

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

#406

Post by simik »

kbenson wrote: post #189
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

And here's the HN discussion from when the Spolsky video was posted[1], with the Shkreli link as the top comment. Over 400 comments. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12448545

Huh, I knew I saw this Spolsky vs Shkreli Excel mastery comparison. Thought it was just a dejavu, or something.

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

#407

Post by mclehman »

acct1771 wrote: post #375
ryanmonroe wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having a good data entry gui is the biggest benefit of not-excel in my experience. 90% of the time your data has a real source that's not "Jim's head" and you should find a way to impute the data from that source directly, avoiding the ever-present inaccuracies that come from human-imputed data.

Was the typo to drive home your point?

My guess is that they meant this definition of impute, and are advocating for removing Jim's inferences entirely.

Impute (finance):

assign (a value) to something by inference from the value of the products or processes to which it contributes.

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

#408

Post by 0x445442 »

laurent123456 wrote: post #358
incompatible wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve wondered on more than one occasion how many business problems could be solved much more quickly by just using excel as the front end gui/view instead of using some heavy weight client technology or worse, a web app.

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

#409

Post by askafriend »

_pmf_ wrote: post #400
joshgel wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have standardized their mental models

Which cannot be said for software engineers.

This is called "Architecture" or "Code Patterns".

It can absolutely be said for Software Engineers. It just can't be said of every Software Engineering Org.

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

#410

Post by newguynewguy »

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…

Over 10 sheets and 20mb what should one switch to? Start a database?
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