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'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

theguardian.com

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Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#11

Post by NeoTar »

Excel can be really great — it’s been said that a huge amount of the world‘s programming is actually done in excel (summing a column of numbers is, after all, a very primitive programme).

I wish there were better tools to help excel users migrate to more formal coding. Something that allows the immediate visibility and accessibility of Excel code, but avoids some of the problems of updating a formula in one place, but missing another, allowing better testing, and type safety for data.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#12

Post by fassssst »

vlovich123 wrote: post #2

Quotes from people 30 and above which sounds about right. Is anyone these days growing up using Excel over Google Sheets? You used to have to pirate Excel and Google just gives it away for free with a free email account.

Excel is free online too.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#13

Post by mindslight »

vlovich123 wrote: post #2

Quotes from people 30 and above which sounds about right. Is anyone these days growing up using Excel over Google Sheets? You used to have to pirate Excel and Google just gives it away for free with a free email account.

Immediately focusing on the distinction between Microsoft Excel Proper and competing implementations with essentially similar functionality is so weird to me. I feel a fondness for this article despite not having used Microsoft Excel itself for like two decades. The point is the larger genre, and the empowerment of programming and data management capabilities it creates for regular users.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#15

Post by baq »

NeoTar wrote: post #11

Excel can be really great — it’s been said that a huge amount of the world‘s programming is actually done in excel (summing a column of numbers is, after all, a very primitive programme). I wish there were better tools to help excel users migrate to more formal coding. Something that allows the immediate visibility and accessibility of Excel code, but avoids some of the problems of updating a formula in one place, bu…

Best part: Excel supports your example and many other similar quality of programmers life use cases and has been for years if not decades (e.g. named ranges and tables). For some reason people don’t use them.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#16

Post by throwaway106382 »

I’ve only ever used Libre(open) Office Calc since I’ve never paid for or bothered to pirate office before. What can Excel do that Calc can’t?

I’ve never done anything crazy heavy with it, but functions and stuff work fine for me I guess.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#17

Post by hotsauceror »

standardUser wrote: post #6

I have several extremely complex spreadsheets that have reached a breaking point because "the maximum number of fonts has been exceeded". There's like 8 fonts being used at most. The problem is, I don't have an alternative piece of software that can maintain the other very complicated formatting, let alone import it. And it now starts to revert formatting randomly throughout the spreadsheets. It's a widely known prob…

I must admit, of all the stories I’ve heard about Excel spreadsheets being “this one goes up to eleven” in their complexity, “too many fonts” is a new one.

Perhaps you could use an alternative differentiator for your data presentation?

I’m morbidly curious to hear more about this scenario.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#18

Post by baq »

throwaway106382 wrote: post #16

I’ve only ever used Libre(open) Office Calc since I’ve never paid for or bothered to pirate office before. What can Excel do that Calc can’t? I’ve never done anything crazy heavy with it, but functions and stuff work fine for me I guess.

I’ve used Excel and Calc and the short answer is ‘everything’. Excel is faster, more reliable and has a much bigger community.

Calc is ok if you want to work with small spreadsheets and don’t care about the occasional bug.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#20

Post by DrBazza »

standardUser wrote: post #6

I have several extremely complex spreadsheets that have reached a breaking point because "the maximum number of fonts has been exceeded". There's like 8 fonts being used at most. The problem is, I don't have an alternative piece of software that can maintain the other very complicated formatting, let alone import it. And it now starts to revert formatting randomly throughout the spreadsheets. It's a widely known prob…

And there I was getting bothered about the limits of the xlcall c api.
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