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Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

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Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#61

Post by Banana699 »

neovive wrote: post #29

I'm consistently amazed at the ubiquity and versatility of spreadsheets in both small and large businesses. What other no/low-code tool can be shaped into solutions for finance, accounting, project management, event planning, scheduling, data collection, etc.? The concept of rows+columns+cells is powerful, flexible and easy to understand; when combined with formatting, fills and functions the possibilities are endles…

The interesting thing is that rows and columns wasn't the groundbreaking concept that energized Bricklin to implement it, the fundamental novelty is the automatic recalculation feature. The origin story of how visicalc first formed in his mind is varied, but every version the fundamental insight is that you write expressions symbolically and the computer substitutes so when you change the value of the symbols the computer automatically recalculates.

The idea of a grid came to him when he was implementing and had to define the way you reference values symbolically in your expressions, it's not a problem in traditional programming because we have variables and functions and objects and a metric ton load of other named abstractions, but he wanted a GUI. At first he experimented with arrows but the graph very quickly became too unwieldy, then he hit upon the idea of a grid to address and reference values as will as display them. Basically a two dimensional computer memory where the addresses is the (row, col) pair. Simple yet elegant.

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#63

Post by WorldMaker »

zokier wrote: post #35
amichal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i recently got burned because at some point in the last few years Excel decided it would be better if it attempted to use localized thousands and decimal separators. item,cost,currency "Socks",1.234,USD Represents socks costing about a dollar in countries that use '.' as a decimal (most) and about a thousand dollars in countries that use a ','. In locales using a decimal period '.' double clicking will open the CSV j…

Modern excel is better at this because it has this "powerquery" thing integrated to csv import which allows bit more control how data is imported. The classic csv import is really bad though. It is bit hidden feature, you have to click "transform data" button when importing the file Here is sort of some docs on it https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/import-or-export-... (section "Import a text file by connecti…

The classic "Text File Import Wizard", going back decades, is even easier than "PowerQuery" for the common and basic "set the type for each column so that Text is Text and not General" but it's now hidden and you have to search for it. (Admittedly, a lot of people had to search for it even when it was on the Ribbon.)

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#65

Post by aksss »

Banana699 wrote: post #61
neovive wrote: post #29

I'm consistently amazed at the ubiquity and versatility of spreadsheets in both small and large businesses. What other no/low-code tool can be shaped into solutions for finance, accounting, project management, event planning, scheduling, data collection, etc.? The concept of rows+columns+cells is powerful, flexible and easy to understand; when combined with formatting, fills and functions the possibilities are endles…

The interesting thing is that rows and columns wasn't the groundbreaking concept that energized Bricklin to implement it, the fundamental novelty is the automatic recalculation feature. The origin story of how visicalc first formed in his mind is varied, but every version the fundamental insight is that you write expressions symbolically and the computer substitutes so when you change the value of the symbols the com…

Tabulating data in rows and columns goes back to some of our earliest examples of cuneiform writing, I believe. I always assumed the grid of rows and columns was simply modeling the world as tabulators knew it rather than coming up with a new concept for how to present information. That particular presentation is easy for users to understand because it’s been with us forever.

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#66

Post by kenjackson »

stanrivers wrote: post #24

You know, being controversial here and coming from a finance perspective, I've wondered if Excel has done more harm than good to the finance / M&A / investing industries. Endless iterations, countless different scenarios, simulations of whatever what-if analysis you can think of, exact numbers to 10 decimal places... it all creates the perception of critical thinking and useful work. Often, again in finance and inves…

I don't know if Excel has done more harm, but it sounds like the fact that you don't do critical thinking about investment rationale is the problem. It seems like you need to do both.

This seems akin to writing code w/o design. Sure you can do it, but you're going down the wrong path (and I don't think I'd blame the existence of software because some people write code w/o design).

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#67

Post by agumonkey »

Someone1234 wrote: post #5

Excel remains one of my most used pieces of software, and one where I feel like any education/training has re-paid for itself multiple times over. The more you learn, the more productive you are (and sometimes more informed, thanks to data visualizations). OneNote (desktop) and Excel are the only two pieces of Microsoft Office that I regularly continue to use. They're the only reason I license it. Microsoft Word afte…

I used to say, MS will be remembered for NT5 and Excel

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#68

Post by kyriakos »

Someone1234 wrote: post #5

Excel remains one of my most used pieces of software, and one where I feel like any education/training has re-paid for itself multiple times over. The more you learn, the more productive you are (and sometimes more informed, thanks to data visualizations). OneNote (desktop) and Excel are the only two pieces of Microsoft Office that I regularly continue to use. They're the only reason I license it. Microsoft Word afte…

Add Outlook to the list and it sums up all the useful Office applications in 2020.

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#69

Post by mceoin »

Hey HN! We're building a networked spreadsheet to make it easy to connect, sync and query data without needing to know how to code. We're hiring a lead backend developer to join us. JD here: https://sourcetable.com/jobs#backend-engineer

(I usually wouldn't comment bomb but feels very on-point for this thread as there are plenty of spreadsheet-lovers here.)

I can be reached via eoin [at] sourcetable [dot] com

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#70

Post by cosmie »

amichal wrote: post #48
zokier wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern excel is better at this because it has this "powerquery" thing integrated to csv import which allows bit more control how data is imported. The classic csv import is really bad though. It is bit hidden feature, you have to click "transform data" button when importing the file Here is sort of some docs on it https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/import-or-export-... (section "Import a text file by connecti…

I've always wanted to investigate if there is a current way to do this on a URL without resorting to scripting but have never really gotten the energy up to do it. Being able to send users to https://www.example.com/foo/your_data.csv and have that send the right headers for caching, refresh and authentication so they can use Excel as a mini BI front end without screwing around with ODBC or similar etc would be a nice…

Excel has an entire ETL engine called PowerQuery tucked up under the hood. Originally part of SQL Server Analysis Services, it got strapped into Excel about a decade ago, and more recently tons of other products[1].

The Web[2] connector is what you're after. It can consume a variety of formats, including csv, xml, and json. It supports HTTP Basic Auth pretty well, but if you want to put the data source behind oauth it can get tricky (it technically supports it but depends on how novel the implementation is).

Credentials sit with the (Excel) client, so if the file gets shared with a new user it'll prompt them for authentication details when they first attempt to refresh it. It'd be pretty easy to set up a template/turnkey workbook you can just hand over to new clients with everything all set up and all they have to do is enter their credentials when prompted. Only caveat is Excel for Mac - it only gained Power Query about a year ago, and porting it over is a very involved[3] process including an entire .NET Core rewrite and factoring out Windows dependencies from legacy cruft. The Web connector is one of the many that haven't made it over to the Mac yet, so any clients using a Mac would still need an alternative.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/power-query-wha...

[2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/connectors/web

[3] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/using-net-core-to-prov...

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