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The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

timharford.com

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Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#11

Post by Closi »

gcthomas wrote: post #4

Spreadsheets are a hammer so if that's all you know then all problems look like the nail. Really, many power users of Excel ought to be looking at more capable, testable and readable solutions from professional data analysts and scientists. Python would be a good start, but there are many options better than Excel for critical systems.

> Really, many power users of Excel ought to be looking at more capable, testable and readable solutions from professional data analysts and scientists. Python would be a good start.

I can write python, but I can get the answer out of excel in a fraction of the time for most use cases.

As an added bonus, excel documents are far more ubiquitous and I can share them with clients, and they can see my workings. Python isn’t very transparent and business users can’t usually check the logic.

Excel is also much more interactive and allows for much more “discovery” and playing with the data.

What I would say though, is most power users don’t know about functionality in excel like PowerQuery, relational data models and DAX that actually do turn it into a serious and repeatable tool.

(I’m not arguing that Python isn’t better for many use cases, and excel definitely isn’t right for most critical applications, but I also think Python is much slower for ad-hoc data analysis so both have different places in the market. Anyone think python is faster? I’m down for a race!).

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#12

Post by version_five »

simonw wrote: post #2

This is a great read - I love the Italian accountancy history lesson at the start.

I actually stopped reading there and went to the comments. I dont mean any disrespect, just trying to give a counterpoint: I like to have some more upfront info about an article's thesis before I invest in reading about an Italian history lesson hoping it will be relevant. I see this style a lot for example on substack, as if people are always trying to weave in a relevant historical anecdote or clever fact, which is fine, but it sets a much higher bar if the article is going to delay the build up to a point without first telling me what that point will be. It's easy to get bored along the way and bail.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#13

Post by chasd00 »

gcthomas wrote: post #4

Spreadsheets are a hammer so if that's all you know then all problems look like the nail. Really, many power users of Excel ought to be looking at more capable, testable and readable solutions from professional data analysts and scientists. Python would be a good start, but there are many options better than Excel for critical systems.

what would python be working on then? a .csv, textfile, database, something else? Or would the data be stored as part of the script itself?

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#15

Post by simlan »

version_five wrote: post #12
simonw wrote: post #2

This is a great read - I love the Italian accountancy history lesson at the start.

I actually stopped reading there and went to the comments. I dont mean any disrespect, just trying to give a counterpoint: I like to have some more upfront info about an article's thesis before I invest in reading about an Italian history lesson hoping it will be relevant. I see this style a lot for example on substack, as if people are always trying to weave in a relevant historical anecdote or clever fact, which is…

Well tastes are different. I liked it because of the interspersed backdrop. Granted i am reading this on a chill evening not on the go. Would be different if i had expected a to the point article.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#16

Post by vxNsr »

gcthomas wrote: post #4

Spreadsheets are a hammer so if that's all you know then all problems look like the nail. Really, many power users of Excel ought to be looking at more capable, testable and readable solutions from professional data analysts and scientists. Python would be a good start, but there are many options better than Excel for critical systems.

Excel is more than just a hammer it’s the fork that is in every single drawer of every single company/org in the world.

It’s not about every problem looking like a nail, it’s that, nobody had to pay for this fork, somehow everyone has it and it’s such a great fork that it can do 90% of the problems you throw at it.

Yea sure some problems would be better solved with specialized tools, (eg knife, spoon, etc) but those require training and budget. No one has those. Everyone has a fork.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#17

Post by CivBase »

I hate Excel, not because it's a bad program but because in my experience people misuse it more often than not.

Excel excels at creating spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are pretty reports used to report tabular data. Excel is capable of so much more, but for eveything beyond spreadsheets it's medicore at best and its complexity often makes it a liability.

It's a bad calculator. It's a bad database. It's a bad medium for transferring data. It's a bad front-end. It's a bad notetaking app. If your use case goes beyond making tabular data look pretty, Excel is probably bad at it.

People use Excel for everything because they're comfortable with it. But other solutions are often much better and I'm so tired of cleaning up all the issues Excel has caused (and continues to cause) me.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#19

Post by nodejs_rulez_1 »

d--b wrote: post #10

Disclaimer: I am building a spreadsheet alternative for javascript hackers based on Observable https://www.jigdev.com For those interested it’s all in the disclaimer ;-)

> Here at Jig, we believe that BI should be done by developers.

> Jig apps are written in Javascript.

Validate the market ASAP.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#20

Post by narush »

Fantastic blog post. I highly recommend reading it in full, and also checking out the work of the European Spreadsheet Risks Group, and Felienne Hermans specifically (referenced in the original post). I've been working on a spreadsheet startup [1] for the past 8 months or so and those folks have a large amount of absolutely upsetting-but-helpful research on spreadsheet usage/errors.

After the past few years working with spreadsheet power users, here's how I like to think about them: 1. Most spreadsheets are just used a lists/trackers [2]. 2. Some spreadsheets are very calculation heavy, and are better understood as complex software projects (usually modeling something; s/o to those PE mfs) than as anything else. 3. Spreadsheets make the transition between (simple list/tracker) and (complex software project very fluid. This flexibility usually means that the (complex software project) that is created is buggy as hell.

Spreadsheets give not-super-technical users an incredible visibility into their data. Spreadsheets give not-super-technical users a way to program data transformations in what I would argue is the most generally intuitive way that exists. Spreadsheets give not-super-technical users tools to build software without introducing them to proper software development methods. Ya know, like maybe a test. Or a code review. Or no global variables. Etc.

If you want to see how we're attacking the spreadsheet problem, check us out. Feedback highly appreciated! [1]

[1] https://trymito.io/hn [2] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff...

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