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The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

timharford.com

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Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#101

Post by kwyjobojoe »

markus_zhang wrote: post #23

In my last company we keep a spreadsheet that has tabs occupying almost the maximun number of columns allowed and in different headers. Updating that Excel file needs the full team to work for two full days each month. That was after I created a VBA script to scrape data from internal dashboards and put them directly in the spreadsheet. From my experience these monstrosities are usually created by two reasons: Push f…

We use spreadsheets to manage data that would 1000% be better suited for storage in a database (and extracted the data would be sooooo much simpler than my monthly half day job of updating management reports).

Why? Because we don't have access to any databases. I dread to think of the requests and committees I would need to find and traverse to get a database set up for my team, let alone a system that I can write and run code on. Yet we can guarantee that every internal and external user has access to Excel.

Unless you are working for a software firm, or are part of a dedicated analytics team with access to suitable systems, large companies and government pretty much have no chance of being able to roll your own database.

Don't suggest Access. Never suggest Access.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#102

Post by kwyjobojoe »

recursive wrote: post #40
swader999 wrote: post #25

Many businesses risk it all by building actual applications with Excel. Security, version control, automated testing are pretty much set aside. Case in point: https://insideparadeplatz.ch/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ubs-...

I worked at a company that did product testing from spreadsheets. And not statistically modelling them. Like physical products. The spreadsheet logic was controlling power supplies on a physical test bench.

Impressive.

I worked at a financial software firm written in python that used Excel behind the scenes to run calculations and modelling.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#103

Post by IggleSniggle »

Jiro wrote: post #91
asdff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why we think the user is some child and try to abstract away any and all complexity from their job, which ends up leading to some proprietary solution with huge inefficiencies somewhere compared to a flat file and a script in python or R. Software like excel is often seen as a way to do stuff you could do in R but without having to write code. Imo that thinking is wrong because it makes this assumption t…

>It's not hard to code, children do it. It is hard to code, and average children don't do it. The fact that exceptional children do it more than they do other adult things is because coding doesn't require a lot of expensive equipment and you can afford to do it as a kid.

Yes, and also I think also because it is possible for it to be a self-isolated system; you don’t need as much greater context of the world to make sense of its rules.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#104

Post by arthurcolle »

rtkwe wrote: post #77
arthurcolle wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large sheets? Google Sheets has a much lower cell and row limit compared to Excel

I assume they mean performance wise. Excel could have larger hard limits but handle complex sheets worse.

Google Sheets is an unusable dumpster fire. I just tried to import a 3 million row CSV yesterday and it wasn't able to do it. INDEX/MATCH don't even work properly! Basically unusable unless you need it for scheduling parties or whatever people use Airtable for.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#105

Post by wibblewobble123 »

CJefferson wrote: post #56
goatlover wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notebooks are the next-gen spreadsheets, except they use programming languages instead of formulas.

Jupyter is a joke compared to spreadsheets, it doesn't auto-recalculate when you edit cells.

Observable does. So does Julia’s Pluto.jl.

You’re not paying attention to the space but recalculating notebooks are gaining popularity.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#106

Post by mr_toad »

rexreed wrote: post #37

* The Utility of Spreadsheets No single application has been as widely adopted by as wide a number of people for such a wide range of uses as the spreadsheet. Love them or hate them, but the spreadsheet metaphor is at once highly useful, highly adaptable, and highly usable requiring minimal support to extract needed value. The spreadsheet, with all its questionable glory, is here to stay. From the first Visicalc to E…

Spreadsheets are the private motor vehicles of computing.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#107

Post by NoPicklez »

I work in a global firm that would be the poster child for using spreadsheets, especially spreadsheets that are used for calculations or drawing conclusions.

The firm was made a huge move to Alteryx as a future replacement and is an immediate improvement over Excel. Which in my opinion is fantastic and a much much easier to review platform than Excel. For those that may not have used Alteryx, I'd highly recommend taking a look. It's essentially a GUI based Excel, which is the best way I can describe it, but still offers more functionality than that of Excel with Python integration etc etc

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#108

Post by elefanten »

rtkwe wrote: post #77
arthurcolle wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large sheets? Google Sheets has a much lower cell and row limit compared to Excel

I assume they mean performance wise. Excel could have larger hard limits but handle complex sheets worse.

I'd love to learn if I'm doing something wrong, but Sheets has terrible performance compared to Excel in my experience.

Not just sheet sizes, but Sheets feels much slower and has a vastly weaker toolset. Just the fact that the browser takes precedence for keyboard commands from the web app makes the usability suffer massively.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#109

Post by arcturus17 »

ttul wrote: post #61
rexreed wrote: post #37

* The Utility of Spreadsheets No single application has been as widely adopted by as wide a number of people for such a wide range of uses as the spreadsheet. Love them or hate them, but the spreadsheet metaphor is at once highly useful, highly adaptable, and highly usable requiring minimal support to extract needed value. The spreadsheet, with all its questionable glory, is here to stay. From the first Visicalc to E…

Personally, I strongly prefer working with GSheets to Excel. It handles large sheets better and you never worry about the app crashing and taking your precious work along with it.

And controversial as this may be, JavaScript.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#110

Post by arthurcolle »

arcturus17 wrote: post #109
ttul wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I strongly prefer working with GSheets to Excel. It handles large sheets better and you never worry about the app crashing and taking your precious work along with it.

And controversial as this may be, JavaScript.

performant JavaScript exists apparently - I was shocked to learn that there are some new DeFi projects that are executing DEX arb bots and write all their code in TypeScript (lmao).

It will be extremely funny to see how Google does this whole "rewrite all our office products to use instead of the DOM" project over the next couple quarters... he says, laughing, shaking his head at the wasted effort... Caesar wept for there were no more worlds to conquer

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