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Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

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Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#41

Post by jasode »

JustAQ wrote: post #35
jasode wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The real problem is of course using Excel to maintain data. That's not what it's for. That's what databases are for. Excel is for complex calculations over rows and columns. I use MS Excel extensively and create new .xlsx files every week even though I know databases like SQLite, MySQL, and did consulting for Oracle RDBMS. The problem is that databases do not include a GUI for data viewing . And even though I also k…

What'd be wrong with using something like DBeaver, SqliteStudio, or PG-Admin? Or buying a tool like DataGrip? Microsoft Access even allows you to create your own UI forms for a database. You don't need to write your own GUI for databases. Loads exists.

>What'd be wrong with using something like DBeaver, SqliteStudio, or PG-Admin? Or buying a tool like DataGrip? Microsoft Access

1) Those utilities are not typically included in the workstation image of laptops/desktops unlike MS Excel which is already part of Office 365. Millions are already familiar with the GUI of Excel.

2) The datagrid viewers in those tools are not powerful and feature-rich like Excel. They are often missing features that are taken for granted by Excel users:

- formatting any arbitrary row or column with bold/italics and change the font color or background cell color.

- pivot the data via drag & drop UI (instead of manually writing a SQL cross-tab query)

- hide rows or collapse rows into outlines

- cut rows 37 to 52 and paste them above row 5. That type of behavior is not easy in generic database viewers because most tables -- by typical design of RDBMS table row ids -- do not consider the visible spatial ordering of rows the way the end user wants to see them on the screen unless one adds an extra column to the table such as "gui_view_order_id". Excel has user specified row ordering as default out-of-the-box behavior.

- ... tons of other GUI features like formulas, spell check, etc

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#42

Post by zozbot234 »

jasode wrote: post #30
mcv wrote: post #20

The real problem is of course using Excel to maintain data. That's not what it's for. That's what databases are for. Excel is for complex calculations over rows and columns. And of course it should be better at data validation; you should be able to tell it whether a certain column is a date or not, and Excel shouldn't be jumping to stupid conclusions about it, but it does, and that means you need to be careful and n…

>The real problem is of course using Excel to maintain data. That's not what it's for. That's what databases are for. Excel is for complex calculations over rows and columns. I use MS Excel extensively and create new .xlsx files every week even though I know databases like SQLite, MySQL, and did consulting for Oracle RDBMS. The problem is that databases do not include a GUI for data viewing . And even though I also k…

> An all-in-one db+gui tool like MS Access also isn't really an option since it doesn't have the same powerful GUI data manipulation as Excel.

What's missing from a GUI like MS Access or Libreoffice Base? In your example, you can input your comments/annotations (even something like "highlight these rows as having problems") in a separate table without touching the original data, then use a database query/view to look at both seamlessly. It's only a bit more involved than raw editing on a spreadsheet, and it inherently avoids accidental data loss/corruption.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#43

Post by wil421 »

I love it when excel decides a bunch of digits is a date or decides to remove leading 0000s from a very important number that needs 0000s. Or maybe it wants to make a bunch of digits into scientific notation. I would prefer if excel left my cells alone or just asked what I wanted to do.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#44

Post by zozbot234 »

jasode wrote: post #41
JustAQ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What'd be wrong with using something like DBeaver, SqliteStudio, or PG-Admin? Or buying a tool like DataGrip? Microsoft Access even allows you to create your own UI forms for a database. You don't need to write your own GUI for databases. Loads exists.

>What'd be wrong with using something like DBeaver, SqliteStudio, or PG-Admin? Or buying a tool like DataGrip? Microsoft Access 1) Those utilities are not typically included in the workstation image of laptops/desktops unlike MS Excel which is already part of Office 365. Millions are already familiar with the GUI of Excel. 2) The datagrid viewers in those tools are not powerful and feature-rich like Excel. They are o…

Add an extra table mapping id to gui_order, then just write an easy query/report (or edit the one you already have) to give you a view that's ordered by gui_order first. Not that hard, you just need to make the semantics of what you're doing explicit. This is the inherent tradeoff between raw editing on a spreadsheet (quick and dirty, very error prone) and working on something that has real structure to it, reflecting some underlying semantics.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#45

Post by jraph »

dotancohen wrote: post #38
jasode wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The real problem is of course using Excel to maintain data. That's not what it's for. That's what databases are for. Excel is for complex calculations over rows and columns. I use MS Excel extensively and create new .xlsx files every week even though I know databases like SQLite, MySQL, and did consulting for Oracle RDBMS. The problem is that databases do not include a GUI for data viewing . And even though I also k…

> The problem is that databases do not include a GUI for data viewing. Let's say that I have PyCharm open right now, I'm importing Qt and Sqlite. How would you like your GUI to function? Seriously, write for me a detailed spec and a detailed workflow, and I'll get to work on it already. My Gmail username is the same as my HN username if you'd prefer to collaborate offline. This invite goes for anybody else who [ab]us…

SQLiteBrowser is written in Qt and is a GUI for SQLite. That's exactly what came in mind when I read parent's post.

https://sqlitebrowser.org/

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#46

Post by loufe »

Good initiative, but there are hundreds of used languages, I hope they put a bit more effort into it than just testing the English dates cases. I caught one bad example, for any French speakers, in the article itself:

and MARS tweaked to MARS1.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#47

Post by dotancohen »

jasode wrote: post #41
JustAQ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What'd be wrong with using something like DBeaver, SqliteStudio, or PG-Admin? Or buying a tool like DataGrip? Microsoft Access even allows you to create your own UI forms for a database. You don't need to write your own GUI for databases. Loads exists.

>What'd be wrong with using something like DBeaver, SqliteStudio, or PG-Admin? Or buying a tool like DataGrip? Microsoft Access 1) Those utilities are not typically included in the workstation image of laptops/desktops unlike MS Excel which is already part of Office 365. Millions are already familiar with the GUI of Excel. 2) The datagrid viewers in those tools are not powerful and feature-rich like Excel. They are o…

Please, keep adding to the "tons of other GUI features" list. I'm just started on a Python/Qt/Sqlite project for spreadsheet-like functionality backed by a strongly-typed database. The things that you mention are perfect features. I'd love to know more.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#48

Post by civilized »

mcv wrote: post #20

The real problem is of course using Excel to maintain data. That's not what it's for. That's what databases are for. Excel is for complex calculations over rows and columns. And of course it should be better at data validation; you should be able to tell it whether a certain column is a date or not, and Excel shouldn't be jumping to stupid conclusions about it, but it does, and that means you need to be careful and n…

Monday: "Excel is terrible, use my new solution, it'll blow your socks off!"

Tuesday: New solution is released to much user enthusiasm

Thursday: Users don't get it and are already back in Excel

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#49

Post by mort96 »

dotancohen wrote: post #47
jasode wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What'd be wrong with using something like DBeaver, SqliteStudio, or PG-Admin? Or buying a tool like DataGrip? Microsoft Access 1) Those utilities are not typically included in the workstation image of laptops/desktops unlike MS Excel which is already part of Office 365. Millions are already familiar with the GUI of Excel. 2) The datagrid viewers in those tools are not powerful and feature-rich like Excel. They are o…

Please, keep adding to the "tons of other GUI features" list. I'm just started on a Python/Qt/Sqlite project for spreadsheet-like functionality backed by a strongly-typed database. The things that you mention are perfect features. I'd love to know more.

I'm curious, how do you achieve a strongly-typed database with sqlite?

sqlite's lack of verifying that your data fits in your defined schema is by far my biggest problem with sqlite.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#50

Post by charlieyu1 »

jasode wrote: post #30
mcv wrote: post #20

The real problem is of course using Excel to maintain data. That's not what it's for. That's what databases are for. Excel is for complex calculations over rows and columns. And of course it should be better at data validation; you should be able to tell it whether a certain column is a date or not, and Excel shouldn't be jumping to stupid conclusions about it, but it does, and that means you need to be careful and n…

>The real problem is of course using Excel to maintain data. That's not what it's for. That's what databases are for. Excel is for complex calculations over rows and columns. I use MS Excel extensively and create new .xlsx files every week even though I know databases like SQLite, MySQL, and did consulting for Oracle RDBMS. The problem is that databases do not include a GUI for data viewing . And even though I also k…

You are not supposed to have a GUI view when you have 100K+ entries. Excel misguides people to think that database management is easy. The reality is it is not possible to have a GUI view of middle-large databases with millions of entries because it is computationally impossible
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