31–40 of 40 posts
Unfortunately, it's difficult to find organizations that know how to make the most use out of those skills (outside of the start-up community, and even within the start-up community it's surprisingly rare to find job postings for BD folks that mention relevant/valuable coding skills).
I agree with most of this. I work in marketing and knowing Excel better than most (hardly coding I know) and a little bit of VBA and I get a lot of efficiencies where others can't. I'm now leaning some basic web programming at the moment. It helps open the mind to what can be done which in turn should make me a better marketeer when it comes to making plans. Plus it is good to know if engineers are being asked to do…
knowing Excel better than most (hardly coding I know) and a little bit of VBA There's no question that spreadsheets are programs, albeit not written in a general-purpose language. Question for you: what do you do in VBA? i.e. in what areas does the spreadsheet alone not suffice?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
knowing Excel better than most (hardly coding I know) and a little bit of VBA There's no question that spreadsheets are programs, albeit not written in a general-purpose language. Question for you: what do you do in VBA? i.e. in what areas does the spreadsheet alone not suffice?
Most of the time it is because the existing functions are inadequate, so people end up adding new ones in VBA. StringConcat, for example, is far more powerful than the regular concatenate function. http://www.cpearson.com/excel/stringconcatenation.aspx
How much VBA could be replaced if Excel gave you the ability to make functions just out of spreadsheet cells? That is: build any calculation you like in a spreadsheet, tell Excel "make this calculation be a function called FOO", then use it wherever you want like a normal function: "=FOO(123,A1)" or what have you.
I agree with most of this. I work in marketing and knowing Excel better than most (hardly coding I know) and a little bit of VBA and I get a lot of efficiencies where others can't. I'm now leaning some basic web programming at the moment. It helps open the mind to what can be done which in turn should make me a better marketeer when it comes to making plans. Plus it is good to know if engineers are being asked to do…
Excel is considered 'functional programming', which is different than traditional programming but nevertheless incredibly valuable. I took a 'Computer Skills for Business' class during undergrad and I can't thank it enough for turning ten-minute tedium into snippets of code.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the time it is because the existing functions are inadequate, so people end up adding new ones in VBA. StringConcat, for example, is far more powerful than the regular concatenate function. http://www.cpearson.com/excel/stringconcatenation.aspx
When you say "function" you mean something that just does computation, right? As opposed to code that accesses the Excel object model to create interactive effects, like, say, "click this button to change the background color over there"? How much VBA could be replaced if Excel gave you the ability to make functions just out of spreadsheet cells? That is: build any calculation you like in a spreadsheet, tell Excel "m…
On VBA being replaced-- I don't know. It depends who the users you're talking about are. Most people I worked with didn't know any VBA because our models weren't that complicated. I in particular was working on a project that was computationally heavy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you say "function" you mean something that just does computation, right? As opposed to code that accesses the Excel object model to create interactive effects, like, say, "click this button to change the background color over there"? How much VBA could be replaced if Excel gave you the ability to make functions just out of spreadsheet cells? That is: build any calculation you like in a spreadsheet, tell Excel "m…
Yes on the definition of function. I did also use VBA to make certain visual effects possible (the one I remember was some advanced conditional formatting). On VBA being replaced-- I don't know. It depends who the users you're talking about are. Most people I worked with didn't know any VBA because our models weren't that complicated. I in particular was working on a project that was computationally heavy.
(My email's in my profile if you'd rather discuss it offline.)
I agree with most of this. I work in marketing and knowing Excel better than most (hardly coding I know) and a little bit of VBA and I get a lot of efficiencies where others can't. I'm now leaning some basic web programming at the moment. It helps open the mind to what can be done which in turn should make me a better marketeer when it comes to making plans. Plus it is good to know if engineers are being asked to do…
knowing Excel better than most (hardly coding I know) and a little bit of VBA There's no question that spreadsheets are programs, albeit not written in a general-purpose language. Question for you: what do you do in VBA? i.e. in what areas does the spreadsheet alone not suffice?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excel is considered 'functional programming', which is different than traditional programming but nevertheless incredibly valuable. I took a 'Computer Skills for Business' class during undergrad and I can't thank it enough for turning ten-minute tedium into snippets of code.
What has been your greatest triumph in Excel? What about your biggest problem with it?
Generally speaking, I'll use Excel when I want to go quickly from nothing to displayable content (it also helps that it's easier to explain away an Excel formula than show someone a mess of Haskell). And, on a tangential note, it certainly helps that pretty much every school or office computer will have some version of Excel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What has been your greatest triumph in Excel? What about your biggest problem with it?
Not sure about my greatest triumph, but my biggest problem is definitely how certain tasks are either hilariously easy (linear analyses, data modeling) or prohibitively frustrating (lack of conditional loops, version control.) Generally speaking, I'll use Excel when I want to go quickly from nothing to displayable content (it also helps that it's easier to explain away an Excel formula than show someone a mess of Has…