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Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

wired.co.uk

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Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#121

Post by listenallyall »

Veen wrote: post #112
listenallyall wrote: post #89

Give me a break. 2nd sentence of the article: "It had the number 40,335 in a random box, and payroll wasn’t clear why it was there." If you work with Excel with any regularity at all, it's immediately 100% clear that this is a Date issue. I can't emphasize enough how obvious and elementary this "mystery" is.

The article is written for a general audience that probably doesn’t use Excel regularly. It would be counter-productive to use an example the reader needs paragraphs of explanation to understand.

It's not about the article, it's a criticism of a company so clueless that it was unable to decipher a date without calling upon outside consultants.

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#122

Post by dagaci »

iagovar wrote: post #101
OzCrimson wrote: post #80

Excel bashing is easy but, where's a truly comparable alternative? - Alteryx at $5000/year/user? - A database that requires specialized skill or going through a DBA for every little need? - Salesforce? It's hell to configure if you don't have the skill. - Sharepoint? Again. If you're a small business or nonprofit, you've gotta hire or train someone before this is a serious conversation. I would in no way suggest that…

Knime. Desktop app is free, is not as polished as alteryx but with some community love it will improve massively. It already is WAY better than Excel. Stuff is organized in a manner someone unfamiliar with data handling or programming can understand it. It takes a little bit to master, an some stuff (like looks and variable passing) is still unintuitive.

Is it just a better "Excel" or does it have some actual feature to prevent people making mistakes?

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#123

Post by dagaci »

They key here is not about swapping tools, or swapping people, because tools and people are both equally fallible.

The key is "Code Review" and reasonably proof by testing, not just unit testing which is just nice, but integration testing which is strong.

Responsibility is knowing the scale of potential impact, that's when you should 100% insist having some proof with a proper tester.

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#124

Post by intended »

lloeki wrote: post #85
OzCrimson wrote: post #80

Excel bashing is easy but, where's a truly comparable alternative? - Alteryx at $5000/year/user? - A database that requires specialized skill or going through a DBA for every little need? - Salesforce? It's hell to configure if you don't have the skill. - Sharepoint? Again. If you're a small business or nonprofit, you've gotta hire or train someone before this is a serious conversation. I would in no way suggest that…

To me it seems Python or Julia notebook stuff like ipython or jupyter could (and did in some circles) displace Excel in almost all cases. The self-sustained inertia to change is real though.

Charting in excel is a million times faster and easier than having to learn an entire language.

Can’t we simply accept this for what it is? Code nerds preferring a code solution while normal people simply use the modern equivalent of graph paper?

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#125

Post by qayxc »

tijsvd wrote: post #74
askvictor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just Excel; Google Sheets too. Our school system has student codes in the format ABC0001 where ABC is the first three letters of the surname, and the number is sequential. So a student with a surname Martin might get a code MAR0004. Which Sheets, in it's wisdom, decides to interpret as the date March 2004. Go figure.

The age-old workaround for this used to be to type an apostrophe in front of the value, which forces Excel to interpret as text. IIRC that used to work in Google Sheets as well. Doesn't that trick work anymore?

It does, but people are uneducated and think that just because something runs in the browser, it doesn't require training and knowledge to use properly...

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#126

Post by qayxc »

jen729w wrote: post #81
airstrike wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love it. I'm in Excel ~50+ hours / week and will definitely start using this sentence

Fifty hours a week? You might need to think about working less.

...or becoming more efficient - who knows?

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#128

Post by qayxc »

tuatoru wrote: post #75
crispyporkbites wrote: post #21

Excel is a triumph of software. Never before has there been a REPL so powerful, a programming language so widely used, an environment so simple even mere mortals can produce magic - without it what would we have? The power of software would remain closed behind the Ivory gates of the self-titled engineers with development cycles, sprints and countless hours to make a single formulae change. Fear the excel less world,…

> without it what would we have? In an ideal world, we would have pgsql (the PostgreSQL front-end) and AWK, and people who realize that thinking about the model before you start playing with layouts and copy-pasting formulas is a good idea. Edit: Excel is a Dunning-Kruger syndrome enabler. People think they can do data analysis because they can type "=sum(B1:B4)" into a spreadsheet.

We seem to have wildly different definitions of the term "ideal"...

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#129

Post by viraptor »

iagovar wrote: post #101
OzCrimson wrote: post #80

Excel bashing is easy but, where's a truly comparable alternative? - Alteryx at $5000/year/user? - A database that requires specialized skill or going through a DBA for every little need? - Salesforce? It's hell to configure if you don't have the skill. - Sharepoint? Again. If you're a small business or nonprofit, you've gotta hire or train someone before this is a serious conversation. I would in no way suggest that…

Knime. Desktop app is free, is not as polished as alteryx but with some community love it will improve massively. It already is WAY better than Excel. Stuff is organized in a manner someone unfamiliar with data handling or programming can understand it. It takes a little bit to master, an some stuff (like looks and variable passing) is still unintuitive.

This is amazing. Thanks for pointing out knime. There were so many occasion since and including uni where I wish I could've used that.

Re: Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors

#130

Post by eru »

2fast4you wrote: post #72
Sharlin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel being the de facto standard, Sheets has to try to be compatible with it, quirks and all.

Speaking of quirks, Excel still incorrectly assumes the year 1900 is a leap year. Even Excel has to try to be compatible with Excel. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/w...

Microsoft even tried to get that quirk into the official standard.
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