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I only use Google Sheets

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191–200 of 361 posts

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#191

Post by fsckboy »

BoredPositron wrote: post #47
PunchTornado wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

try being banned by msft. I am still banned for 6 years without doing anything wrong. still lost access to all of my accounts.

My dad got a Trojan and they took over his msft account to buy some Xbox cards. They banned him as well but he took them to small claims in the EU. As usual they didn't show up and he got a ruling to reinstate his account. Was under 100 bucks and he got his account back. If the account is really important I would do the same. There is a 90% chance they won't show.

just as a point of interest, in US small claims courts, the judge can award monetary damages, but cannot order somebody to do something (like turn your account on) i'm not sure if this varies by state.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#192

Post by mixcocam »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
mixcocam wrote: post #24

"Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that cr…

Anecdotal, my previous employer had a contract once for a gas storage / exchange, for years their whole business relied on an Excel sheet (basically tracking gas storage transactions from various customers). I don't remember why but they decided to migrate that to a proper application, I think it took a full development team two years to build in all. But it's likely that, as these things go, they added much more fea…

Agreed. That is my point. If that company had built the app from the start it would have died building it.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#193

Post by breadwinner »

compiler-guy wrote: post #186
breadwinner wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true, you can use Airtable to get the ease of use of a spreadsheet with the robustness of a database.

And now you have two problems. It’s not just SQL that you have to learn, but airtable. Which probably isn’t installed anywhere.

Not true. You can't use SQL in Airtable even if you want to, it just doesn't support it. Also, Airtable is SaaS, you can't install it.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#194

Post by mixcocam »

SaintRomuald wrote: post #188
mixcocam wrote: post #24

"Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that cr…

If you can do something badly and you can do something the right way in the same amount of time, why do it wrong?

“Same amount of time”, that’s where you are wrong . Then again, I’m not the one saying Knuth know better than me, maybe not better than you though.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#195

Post by t_mann »

sjw987 wrote: post #94
t_mann wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're not using something like Nextcloud (which should cover all your bases it seems). Any particular reason, any experiences you want to share?

I just sort of wanted to learn how to build (rudimentary) versions of the same apps I've always used made by other companies/people, and like the idea of the data being as clean as possible. I'm a bit of a data purist, so I store all of my photos unedited, and keep all of my text documents as simple as possible (minimal formatting, data-heavy). I'm also wary of just moving from one product to another, with the hassle…

I'm on a similar page. I try to set things up so that as many things as possible are regular files in my folder structure, which I then sync across devices. In my experience those are the only files I can rely on being able to retrieve long-term. Eg I don't use a photo app at all, I just have a folder with sub-folders (where I copy them manually). I don't know (yet) how Nextcloud fits with that, but it has several features that look really interesting in general (eg video calls).

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#196

Post by analog31 »

breadwinner wrote: post #171
thesuitonym wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another oft overlooked point is that anti-spreadsheet people aren't actually against using spreadsheets, we just want our coworkers to stop placing mission critical operations in an enormous, half-baked spreadsheet that exists only in some long-since retired users home directory.

You need to give them a tool that's as easy to use as a spreadsheet, and yet stores data in a relational database. There are plenty of spreadsheet-database hybrids in the market.

Using any tool but Excel has the same problem as finding programmers who are willing to use some obscure proprietary programming language. They're going to worry about career lock if they're not developing portable skills.

Even though Excel is proprietary too, it's ubiquitous enough that people don't have to worry about it.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#198

Post by sokoloff »

goostavos wrote: post #181
thesuitonym wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another oft overlooked point is that anti-spreadsheet people aren't actually against using spreadsheets, we just want our coworkers to stop placing mission critical operations in an enormous, half-baked spreadsheet that exists only in some long-since retired users home directory.

One of the surprising things about working inside of $MegaCorp is that if you knock on enough doors, you'll eventually find that each org has, like, one dude* with a spread sheet that powers everything else. Teams will get spun up to try to "automate" this spreadsheet, but, on a long enough time horizon, the spreadsheet wins.

Similar to the author’s cases: I’ve sat through several presentations of small teams who worked for 6-10 weeks to create a web app that does something (the details vary slightly from case to case) where at the end of the presentation, my first thought is “what a waste of effort and money; that would have taken 2-4 hours if they’d just used a spreadsheet”.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#199

Post by blitt »

ksec wrote: post #88

Slightly Off Topic, are there any other online SpreadSheets other than Excel 365 and Google Sheets? Some of them are AirTable like which is CRM focus, but I just want a really simple spreadsheet that is easily accessible and not from Big Tech.

Try out rowzero.io! It's a pure spreadsheet like Sheets/Excel, but with a much larger row limit.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#200

Post by immibis »

gregates wrote: post #172
thesuitonym wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another oft overlooked point is that anti-spreadsheet people aren't actually against using spreadsheets, we just want our coworkers to stop placing mission critical operations in an enormous, half-baked spreadsheet that exists only in some long-since retired users home directory.

As someone who has been to multiple trade shows to show off our own spreadsheet product that solves some of these problems ( https://rowzero.io/home ), I can tell you there are a bunch of data engineers and their managers who have a visceral hatred of spreadsheets but have trouble articulating any reason for it.

Feels a bit like the no-code paradox though. When you make a sufficiently advanced no-code (or no-database) tool it becomes equivalent to code (or a database) and even though it does entice a novice to start using it, a complex system made in it is still complex code (or a complex database) and ends up requiring a competent programmer (or db admin) to maintain it, who wishes it was written the normal way to begin with.
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