Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 129 posts

Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

#101

Post by ginko »

thibautg wrote: post #2

The ideal spreadsheet should be a mix of Excel, Geogebra, reactive Jupyter Notebook (like ObservableHQ or Vue.js computed properties), programmable in Python, C#, JavaScript and/or other languages with the ability to embed third-party widgets like maps or custom charts. And decent data connectors with SQL-like query syntax (including JOINs).

It's kind of telling that all the sibling posts suggest SaaS options. The ironic thing about MS Office these days is that, even if it's still proprietary, you at least get to run it locally as a native application and keep control of your data.

Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

#102

Post by hliyan »

cm2187 wrote: post #89

It is great that Microsoft is investing in Office again. I just got upgraded at work from office 2007 to 2016 (we like to take our time, I was on WinXP not so long ago), and I can barely see the difference. They changed some colors, there are menus that open in a panel instead of a modal box. I don’t think a single user cares about these changes (and they seem to have carefully preserved the bugs). And the problemati…

This is a headache for me too: with a sheet being a canvas on which you can add tables, charts, the tables have scroll bars if they overflow. Instead of the rigid single grid per tab, where if you show two tables one over the other you need to align the columns even when they have different data types

Another thing I'd like to see is to be able to treat cells as objects rather than single scalar variables. For example, to represent data that has more than two dimensions.

Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

#103

Post by angry_octet »

antpls wrote: post #94
cm2187 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good recent example of that. We were asking a dev team to build a dashboard (we are a bank) showing capital ratios. The team came back saying voila! We looked at it, and the headline number in bold at the centre of the dashboard was showing a cet1 ratio of 1300% (a cet1 ratio is typically in the 5%-20% range). I am sure they used modern programming techniques, but they left an error that would have shocked even the…

On the other hand, a dashboard is probably one of the most boring stuff to work on when you have a CS degree. Typically, a dashboard is asked as a deliverable to keep the dev team busy while also making sure other people's jobs in the bank arent rendered obsolete if the dev team were used to its full potential. The people saying Devs dont do enough effort to understand the domain are the same people who try to keep t…

You're right, a dashboard is a project for when you don't know if they can do anything useful.

I think the fault is actually the split between IT (a support function) and the product group, which often doesn't have/isn't allowed embedded devs.

IT managers are often toxic for delivering, never take ownership, SLA bullshit, too much PRINCE2 and ITIL.

If you can get developers embedded, huge wins are possible. But they have to bring the client with them, not code away in isolation.

Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

#104

Post by angry_octet »

bsder wrote: post #8

The thing I need most is for "Save" to do "Pull in dependencies and and check into version control". That way my people can still use Excel but I have a way of validating and controlling it.

A way to diff would be amazing. Textual diff (these formulas changed) and visual (ie highlighting block formula differences).

Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

#105

Post by kgwgk »

cm2187 wrote: post #89

It is great that Microsoft is investing in Office again. I just got upgraded at work from office 2007 to 2016 (we like to take our time, I was on WinXP not so long ago), and I can barely see the difference. They changed some colors, there are menus that open in a panel instead of a modal box. I don’t think a single user cares about these changes (and they seem to have carefully preserved the bugs). And the problemati…

Microsoft want’s to kill VBA but customers won’t allow that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Tools_for_Offi... may make sense for developers, but users like the ability to do things in the “wrong way”.

Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

#106

Post by nerdponx »

antpls wrote: post #94
cm2187 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good recent example of that. We were asking a dev team to build a dashboard (we are a bank) showing capital ratios. The team came back saying voila! We looked at it, and the headline number in bold at the centre of the dashboard was showing a cet1 ratio of 1300% (a cet1 ratio is typically in the 5%-20% range). I am sure they used modern programming techniques, but they left an error that would have shocked even the…

On the other hand, a dashboard is probably one of the most boring stuff to work on when you have a CS degree. Typically, a dashboard is asked as a deliverable to keep the dev team busy while also making sure other people's jobs in the bank arent rendered obsolete if the dev team were used to its full potential. The people saying Devs dont do enough effort to understand the domain are the same people who try to keep t…

That's because a dashboard is easy (boring) if you code it up right. Whereas in Excel it's wizardry.

Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

#107

Post by tjalfi »

ramraj07 wrote: post #79
nightski wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really true though? Comprehensive test coverage will definitely give the new programmers confidence, but is it justified? Are there really that many software projects where lots of tests instills confidence that changes won't break things? At the end of the day, unit tests or not - you have to understand the code you are working in. This means new programmers will not deliver features as fast as those who hav…

There was a post on HN about Oracle's DB2 code being completely in C and fully unitelligible. Only an insane suite of semi integration tests allows them to maintain it, albeit in the most inefficient way.

Is [0] the comment you are referring to?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941

Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

#108

Post by sbierwagen »

sorenjan wrote: post #60

I rarely use Excel nowadays, but if I could choose one thing to improve it would be to let me use the English names for functions. Excel is localized to my language, and that includes function names. That probably made sense when targeting non technical people 30 years ago, but it makes it harder to search online and is non intuitive when you're used to other programming languages.

Set your system locale to US/English, then.

Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

#109

Post by cm2187 »

kgwgk wrote: post #105
cm2187 wrote: post #89

It is great that Microsoft is investing in Office again. I just got upgraded at work from office 2007 to 2016 (we like to take our time, I was on WinXP not so long ago), and I can barely see the difference. They changed some colors, there are menus that open in a panel instead of a modal box. I don’t think a single user cares about these changes (and they seem to have carefully preserved the bugs). And the problemati…

Microsoft want’s to kill VBA but customers won’t allow that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Tools_for_Offi... may make sense for developers, but users like the ability to do things in the “wrong way”.

VSTO isn't great. There was something called VSTA earlier, basically a little visual studio embedded in Office, you could do with any .net language what you could do with VBA. Unfortunately they canned it.

Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets

#110

Post by gizmo686 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #45
tluyben2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks, insurers, accountants; I know a company with 100M euro rev per year that runs entirely on Excel with VBA. Their office car park gate is opened, closed and managed with Excel. It sounds crazy but the CTO is a cofounder and he found it is much cheaper to just do everthing that way. They have been running like that for over 20 years.

One possibility is this - the people who mess with Excel VBA are generally very smart folk who just never went too techy, but then got really good at Excel and just learned vba as the next logical step. That means the code might not be kosher but it will be thoughtfully written and encompassing all the practical use cases. Contrast that with a 20something can grad who while competent isn't as smart as that non tech g…

Still, when you have a team of very smart folk writing complicated bussiness critical software in Excell, it is a good indication that you should invest in training those people in more proper programming languages.
Post reply on HN