81–90 of 169 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen no evidence this is a bug.
> I've seen no evidence this is a bug. Maybe it depends on your use case, but why it converts almost everything to dates ? Why not to numbers ?
Excel also tries to automatically convert numbers as well.
Isn't it possible to just set the format of the cell to plain text ? Whoever works with genetic data in Excel should know how to do this, if correct.
Not a problem for someone who understands the issue, but it is a slow/confusing way to open files.
The real problem is the default behaviour of double-clicking a CSV in Explorer and destroying the contents.
I think implicit conversions is the other billion dollar mistake in computing. It just shows up as a subtle source of mistakes in so many places. JavaScript, MySQL, YAML, Excel, PHP, just to make a few off the top of my head, have all caused countless bugs and security exploits due to implicit conversations of data which can be interpreted in multiple ways, and where the system happened to pick the wrong one.
They’re good for professional and hobby code golf though.
I think implicit conversions is the other billion dollar mistake in computing. It just shows up as a subtle source of mistakes in so many places. JavaScript, MySQL, YAML, Excel, PHP, just to make a few off the top of my head, have all caused countless bugs and security exploits due to implicit conversations of data which can be interpreted in multiple ways, and where the system happened to pick the wrong one.
I think these are billion dollar mistakes only because they've allowed for trillions in improvements in the first place. People choose these system with loose conversions over and over again because it's an advantage up to a point. Of course it becomes a liability when expanded too much and used in now critical systems, but IMHO the tradeoff usually ends as a net positive. Which is why, over and over we build more of…
There doesn't have to be a tradeoff if you make it optional.
I think implicit conversions is the other billion dollar mistake in computing. It just shows up as a subtle source of mistakes in so many places. JavaScript, MySQL, YAML, Excel, PHP, just to make a few off the top of my head, have all caused countless bugs and security exploits due to implicit conversations of data which can be interpreted in multiple ways, and where the system happened to pick the wrong one.
I think these are billion dollar mistakes only because they've allowed for trillions in improvements in the first place. People choose these system with loose conversions over and over again because it's an advantage up to a point. Of course it becomes a liability when expanded too much and used in now critical systems, but IMHO the tradeoff usually ends as a net positive. Which is why, over and over we build more of…
or they dont know any better.
I think implicit conversions is the other billion dollar mistake in computing. It just shows up as a subtle source of mistakes in so many places. JavaScript, MySQL, YAML, Excel, PHP, just to make a few off the top of my head, have all caused countless bugs and security exploits due to implicit conversations of data which can be interpreted in multiple ways, and where the system happened to pick the wrong one.
A certain CEO says that we won't need programming languages because you will be able to program AI systems with natural language. Well, the problem with natural language is not that we do not have the tech, it is that natural language is too imprecise. People will, again, end up being dissatisfied by the output of AI systems and blame it on the tech, while the problem just remains that as humans we kinda suck at being explicit about what we want.
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A lot of analysis is done using CSVs being pushed in and out of Excel. Doing so strips the formatting. Please understand the workflows being crying “skill issue”.
You can write CSVs in such a way that forces Excel to infer specific data types: "=""Data Here""" will always be treated as a string. This is also supported by Sheets, apparently.
Or they could set the format of the column to text instead of keeping it as general and everything would just work. If these "scientists" are having this problem then they haven't spent any time at all learning how to use the tool they rely on. Can we trust anything these people produce if this is the level of competence they have with Excel?
That's too much work. Nobody have time for doing or learning that. Sounds like a joke, but it isn't. I know scientists who think exactly like that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think these are billion dollar mistakes only because they've allowed for trillions in improvements in the first place. People choose these system with loose conversions over and over again because it's an advantage up to a point. Of course it becomes a liability when expanded too much and used in now critical systems, but IMHO the tradeoff usually ends as a net positive. Which is why, over and over we build more of…
it would be so easy to just implement an opt-out function, but Microsoft doesn't want to. There doesn't have to be a tradeoff if you make it optional.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think these are billion dollar mistakes only because they've allowed for trillions in improvements in the first place. People choose these system with loose conversions over and over again because it's an advantage up to a point. Of course it becomes a liability when expanded too much and used in now critical systems, but IMHO the tradeoff usually ends as a net positive. Which is why, over and over we build more of…
it would be so easy to just implement an opt-out function, but Microsoft doesn't want to. There doesn't have to be a tradeoff if you make it optional.
An option was added last year [0] the way you propose it, but until then users already had the option to mark the columns as text. The same way we have to deal with any data where auto detection might be problematic: explicitely set a type, and potentially a format.
But of course that's bothersome, sometime people forget to do it, sometimes they don't even know how to properly do it etc. And some of these people will still probably forget to set the option, and there are still edge cases where it can fail (macros are cited)
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/21/23926585/microsoft-excel...