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Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

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Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#121

Post by listenallyall »

crispyambulance wrote: post #104
fivea wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spreadsheets are better because as you say the owner is their job to maintain it. If you replace with an IT process the new "owner" is likely a below-average developer that probably is uninterested in the business. I disagree. Spreadsheets are incomparably worse because what you charitably described as "the owner is their job to maintain it" in real life it's reflected as having a single employee who abused a first…

> Advocating for spreadsheets is advocating for these vulnerabilities. Spreadsheets will exist regardless of what developers think of them. Ironically, that's a good thing. Many projects that put food on dev's tables started out as out-of-control Excel monstrosities that were created and operated for long spans of time by well-meaning and productive folks. They start as simple manual spreadsheets with some formulas a…

Most forecasting doesn't really work, as in, most falls between "not useful for predicting the future" and "outright wrong." You could get your forecasts for free or you could pay millions of dollars, pretty much same result. Not an Excel thing in any way.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#122

Post by joejohnston »

password4321 wrote: post #52
wslh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it exist a good Microsoft Access replacement?

Appsmith was recommended last year. https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmith https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657803#26658546 Ask HN: Best low-/no-code solution for simple web-based database frontends

How was it recommended?

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#124

Post by robinparriath »

rr808 wrote: post #84
motohagiography wrote: post #31

I've learned products designed to replace spreadsheets have a huge hurdle because the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job. Replacing them removes their autonomy and control over an information process, and subsumes the value they bring to their employers - so they will resist products that threaten that. Excel is a complete management subculture. The other advice I give is if you are ge…

> I've learned products designed to replace spreadsheets have a huge hurdle because the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job. Replacing them removes their autonomy and control over an information process, and subsumes the value they bring to their employers - so they will resist products that threaten that. Excel is a complete management subculture. Spreadsheets are better because as you…

A counter point to this is that spreadsheets bottle-neck the sharing of data and introduce data cleaning issues.

Most spreadsheets are built with the mindset that it is the end of the dataflow. However, at some point, this data needs to be shared forward. This might not be the original intention, but the more important the report is, the more important downstream use-cases become.

This is when spreadsheets become problematic. One can say that it's the owner's job to keep it compatible, but thinking of keeping it compatible isn't what normal spreadsheet users do.

Some issues I've seen:

* One can add a column easily/ rename it. This breaks any data sharing because now, downstream reports break. (In many cases, the data could have been added as a row instead of a column (new status code, etc.)

* Data-types are not enforced. Nothing prevents entering text into what should be a number or even create a completely new status code. Again, automation downstream breaks.

* Important info is usually not included. The spreadsheet is the latest representation of the data, so in many cases, attributes like the time-period (because it's implied) and unique identifiers (skus most frequently) aren't included.

* Maintaining compatible dimensions across different domains is not a priority for a spreadsheet owner. Finance may group countries differently than Supply-chain, which means they'll always see different numbers and argue that their number is correct.

Source: work at a Fortune 500 company, that has way too many excel reports (with critical performance metrics) and combining them to get an accurate view of the company performance is very labor-intensive and error-prone.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#125

Post by foxbee »

I think 'products replacing spreadsheets' is not the right angle. Spreadsheets are great but not for everything.

I think there are a lot of mis-uses of spreadsheets. When users record list type data, long-form content, relational data, etc within spreadsheets, they are probably better off using an app - they, or their IT team can build.

I once seen an enterprise org process where a health and safety check was completed on a clipboard. That user would go back to their desk, push that data into excel, another user would write a script to push that excel data into MySQL.

There are many use cases where spreadsheets are perfect - building financial models.

For transparency - I am the cofounder of a no/low-code tool called Budibase. I am also a happy spreadsheet user. https://github.com/Budibase/budibase

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#126

Post by InflexHQ »

rco8786 wrote: post #57
_the_inflator wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job Yes, observed the same. And "The new tool is faster and more reliable!" does not help either. They got their workflow and cope with it - for years. Only time people adopted new tools - banking - when they could deliver their assignments way faster to their superiors. Personal advantages must be spotted.

To be fair, I don’t think it’s coping. Spreadsheets are malleable by design. Being able to modify how it functions on the fly is an enormous power for these users. And the better/faster/smarter SaaS replacement is also extremely rigid and inflexible. So while it works to replace the current version of their god spreadsheet, it can’t adjust on the fly as the user’s needs change like the spreadsheet can. I’m convinced…

I’m trying my best to create such a product. What you’re describing is something that (1) amateur spreadsheeters can use, (2) the power users, and (3) programmers, will be able to use and not feel out of their depth or patronized. I personally think that given that Excel is a pure-ish declarative language, then building on a declarative language that programmers use is a solid attack on this, which is why I’ve chosen pure functional programming as a basis for my work. It’s been an enjoyable design process to include or throw out ideas that would alienate either end of the spectrum.

Elsewhere: Making all cells CAS gives you a strong foundation for version control, modularity, resizability and share-ability.

Happy to share more thoughts on this. I’m two years into the process.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#127

Post by InflexHQ »

civilized wrote: post #58
motohagiography wrote: post #31

I've learned products designed to replace spreadsheets have a huge hurdle because the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job. Replacing them removes their autonomy and control over an information process, and subsumes the value they bring to their employers - so they will resist products that threaten that. Excel is a complete management subculture. The other advice I give is if you are ge…

> I've learned products designed to replace spreadsheets have a huge hurdle because the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job. In general? Not really. Just as frequently, the fancy tool promoters don't care to understand the subtleties of the job and when it requires flexibility or judgment that the spreadsheet accommodates better. They have their hammer -- software formally engineered by…

I would add that any tool looking to replace Excel will be build on some very powerful but very primitive foundations, I’m order to compete with that flexibility. It’ll never be about adding a special “view” like AirTable or just tacking in Python.

Excel is like Emacs; most users will write some Elisp at some point, it’s designed to be meddled with from the ground up. AirTable is the VSCode; most users will never write a line of plugin code and when you do you’ll find you can’t extend much.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#128

Post by rco8786 »

zarzavat wrote: post #90
rco8786 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I don’t think it’s coping. Spreadsheets are malleable by design. Being able to modify how it functions on the fly is an enormous power for these users. And the better/faster/smarter SaaS replacement is also extremely rigid and inflexible. So while it works to replace the current version of their god spreadsheet, it can’t adjust on the fly as the user’s needs change like the spreadsheet can. I’m convinced…

Truly Excel could be improved in a vast number of ways. But would anyone use it? Excel is a kind of product that is perfectly understandable to the average business person. The more complicated you make it, the more it becomes like real software development. And that is a skill that most people don’t possess.

> The more complicated you make it

Excel is ridiculously complicated. I think you're vastly underestimating the ability of these "average business people" because they don't know how "real software development" works.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#129

Post by rco8786 »

InflexHQ wrote: post #126
rco8786 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I don’t think it’s coping. Spreadsheets are malleable by design. Being able to modify how it functions on the fly is an enormous power for these users. And the better/faster/smarter SaaS replacement is also extremely rigid and inflexible. So while it works to replace the current version of their god spreadsheet, it can’t adjust on the fly as the user’s needs change like the spreadsheet can. I’m convinced…

I’m trying my best to create such a product. What you’re describing is something that (1) amateur spreadsheeters can use, (2) the power users, and (3) programmers, will be able to use and not feel out of their depth or patronized. I personally think that given that Excel is a pure-ish declarative language, then building on a declarative language that programmers use is a solid attack on this, which is why I’ve chosen…

Would love to hear more

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#130

Post by crispyambulance »

listenallyall wrote: post #121
crispyambulance wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Advocating for spreadsheets is advocating for these vulnerabilities. Spreadsheets will exist regardless of what developers think of them. Ironically, that's a good thing. Many projects that put food on dev's tables started out as out-of-control Excel monstrosities that were created and operated for long spans of time by well-meaning and productive folks. They start as simple manual spreadsheets with some formulas a…

Most forecasting doesn't really work, as in, most falls between "not useful for predicting the future" and "outright wrong." You could get your forecasts for free or you could pay millions of dollars, pretty much same result. Not an Excel thing in any way.

Indeed, the spreadsheet I am thinking is particularly hot garbage, but slap some dorky corporate bar-charts on there and it's like beer-googles for suits.
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