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Excel never dies (2021)

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Re: Excel never dies (2021)

#191

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

hermitcrab wrote: post #181
_dain_ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PowerQuery. It's a tool built into Excel. It's a GUI that wraps an almost purely-functional DSL designed for ETL and data munging, called the M language. You can either use the GUI or write the code directly. It has first class functions and closures and normies are programming in it. It's great. More people should know about it. Btw it's kind of funny seeing so many HN users, many of whom must be working on software…

PowerQuery is powerful, but also compromised by the fact it is so closely tied to Excel. If you want to do data transformation tasks (such as joins) on your Excel data and you don't want to learn R or Python+Pandas then you might be better off doing it in a no-code tool designed explicitly for the task, for example Alteryx (if you have deep pockets) or Easy Data Transform (if you don't).

There is another reason that is less often openly disclosed, but very much in play. I recently proposed RStudio or Python/Panda combo to deal with some of the limitations of Excel ( which also conveniently bypasses Alteryx's cost ), but the response I got was somewhat surprising, because it revolved around and I am paraphrasing 'will others be able to learn and use it'. And here is the rub. Excel has a lot of online tutorials and in some ways it is a known quantity. And, well, some people don't want to learn new thingsshrug.

Re: Excel never dies (2021)

#192

Post by bergenty »

adepressedthrow wrote: post #50

I recently sat down and built something more complicated than simple accounting in a spreadsheet. It's what I considered to be a pretty typical usecase for a non-math related sheet; taking in several tables of data and selectively joining them. You enter an ID, press a button, and it finds all of the data related to that ID and presents it to you. I was horrified to find that even with the supporting scripting capabi…

I don’t all that much about excel but I remember being blown away as a 17 year old kid at my first job when someone showed me pivot tables.

Re: Excel never dies (2021)

#193

Post by croes »

thrown_22 wrote: post #115
whatever1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to compile 1 year old code if I don’t have the exact compiler and library versions that the program required at the time of development.

You should write better code. Excel breaks between versions silently. One of my first jobs out of university was to build a pipeline of excel spreadsheet to ensure they were run in the version of excel and windows they were created in. You could not guarantee that you would get the same results otherwise. This was a slight problem for the brokerage I was working at since it had lost them a few million dollars recentl…

Parent said run perfectly not gives the same result.

Re: Excel never dies (2021)

#194

Post by croes »

inglor wrote: post #94

Hey, I work on Excel at Microsoft and wanted to say: if anyone here has any feature requests they want escalated - write them here and I will bring them up. P.S we actually do read all the feedback people leave in the feedback box - it goes mostly straight to the devs.

Make that Excel auto conversions can be switched off entirely

Re: Excel never dies (2021)

#195

Post by croes »

jrm4 wrote: post #6

As someone with a perhaps well deserved reputation as a Microsoft hater (ha, check my history..) Microsoft Excel is perhaps the greatest program-slash-programming language ever invented. Nothing has much come close in terms of giving regular folks the power of general-purpose computing (sadly, further and further removed from what we're doing today.)

And that's exactly the problem. It's great if the person using it knows what he is doing.

I don't want to know how many decisions are based on incorrect excel sheets or exel files no one understands anymore because the original developer already left the company and the next added some "improvement" without really understanding the existing code.

Re: Excel never dies (2021)

#196

Post by bergenty »

I wrote payroll software for my dad’s company when I was 14 that did paychecks, attendance, indemnity, advances, headcount etc. He says it’s the best software he’s ever used, still using it after 15 years. He has tried a bunch of alternatives but nothing is even remotely as accessible.

Re: Excel never dies (2021)

#197

Post by rexreed »

adepressedthrow wrote: post #50

I recently sat down and built something more complicated than simple accounting in a spreadsheet. It's what I considered to be a pretty typical usecase for a non-math related sheet; taking in several tables of data and selectively joining them. You enter an ID, press a button, and it finds all of the data related to that ID and presents it to you. I was horrified to find that even with the supporting scripting capabi…

It's much simpler than all that. Excel is just easy to use and quick to get results and powerful enough to extend, easy to share with others, and is a broadly accepted file format. That's why it works. Everything else is more complicated, more vendor-locked in and takes longer to get results or requires more technical skills than the average Excel user has. Is it the best for everything? No. But it's damn good enough for a LOT of things. Its survival is proof.

Re: Excel never dies (2021)

#198

Post by formerkrogemp »

As an accountant, I can confidently say that excel has at least another five years, more than likely more of being essential in the business world. It's one of our most used and basic apps in accounting. Gusto, paychex, ADP, netsuite, QuickBooks, haven't really come close to replacing it yet in terms of market share I speculate.

Re: Excel never dies (2021)

#199

Post by jsemrau »

adepressedthrow wrote: post #50

I recently sat down and built something more complicated than simple accounting in a spreadsheet. It's what I considered to be a pretty typical usecase for a non-math related sheet; taking in several tables of data and selectively joining them. You enter an ID, press a button, and it finds all of the data related to that ID and presents it to you. I was horrified to find that even with the supporting scripting capabi…

I work in financial services and have build prototypes with Excel that are now multi-million dollar revenue providers (implemented properly).

Excel is powerful in this respect because it is a shared experience. Build something with SAS/R/Python, explaining the results is possible but getting buy-in from other teams is harder.

Re: Excel never dies (2021)

#200

Post by thrown_22 »

croes wrote: post #193
thrown_22 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should write better code. Excel breaks between versions silently. One of my first jobs out of university was to build a pipeline of excel spreadsheet to ensure they were run in the version of excel and windows they were created in. You could not guarantee that you would get the same results otherwise. This was a slight problem for the brokerage I was working at since it had lost them a few million dollars recentl…

Parent said run perfectly not gives the same result.

If you consider 1+1 = 3 to be running perfectly excel sounds like the right tool for any job you have.
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