121–130 of 185 posts
Positioning something in your mind is so difficult in this day and age with so much information overload.
Because 'economics'. Switching costs, network effects, etc... Here's my favorite book on the subject: http://amzn.to/1JMtX0X And yes, that's an affiliate link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10982630 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_barriers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
That site looks like 1995 called and wants its web page back. It's a triumph of non-engineering.
But that network effect. Man oh man.
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So? Many great projects start out as excel spreadsheets: someone has a problem, solves it with excel, then goes on to solve other problems with that spreadsheet. People use it and become dependent on it, but over time the thing becomes intractable. At that point in time, the functionality of the spreadsheet gets implemented by actual developers into some "engineered application." If you are suggesting to NOT start wi…
And once some devs turn it into an "engineered application" the change cycle jumps from minutes or hours to days, weeks or even months.
Perhaps a litte off topic but does anyone here hate open table, if so can you share why? I've always found making a reservation a very plesant experience. To see all the availble times and make a reservation only takes a couple clicks.
The article is from the point of view of the restaurant, claiming the backend tooling sucks, which wouldn't surprise me. Optimizing the front end consumer experience while neglecting the back office is not uncommon.
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For me, this is Twitter. I'm mostly a reader. Writing tweets was incredibly unsatisfying so far and I never got into any kind of habit with it. Sometimes, I have the urge to simply get some random thoughts out of my brain. Sounds like a perfect thing for Twitter, except with Twitter, I have the expectation that my stuff somehow gets noticed. So instead, I use JOURNAL.TXT for that. I write the thought down, it's out o…
Some years ago I came up with a system which I still use extensively. I added these lines to my .bashrc file: log(){ pushd ~/logs; echo >> $*; date >> $*; cat >> $*; } So whenever I have a piece of information that I'd like to keep - a thought on a project, a word from a foreign language I am learning, ideas for christmas gifts, some bash-fu and so on... - I fire up a terminal (mod+return, in my case) and enter log f…
If you want the same thing but want to do it in an app instead of manually in the terminal you should check out Notational Velocity (http://notational.net).
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Let's start a list: Opening a csv triggers a full recalc even if your calcs are on manual. That's absurd given that csv files by definition have no formulas Come on Microsoft. 18 years without updating the scripting abilities. Can't we have a .net version of VBA?? And NO JAVASCRIPT. The fx button still opens a tiny old non resizable windows with a broken search feature, which is impractical if you have hundreds of UD…
I wouldn't recommend most of these ideas to Microsoft. For example, I've done work where I've needed a recalc based on an updated csv so your suggestion would have broken Excel for some of my use cases. There's plenty of changes to recalc rules I would have liked, but I'm not sure any of them were unambiguously good ideas. Also, scripting in spreadsheets is bad practice (besides maybe formatting or simple data fetchi…
Scripting is extremely useful in Excel. In fact the productivity gain of this single feature is just off the chart. You have to think about business users, who barely know how to code. They can automate in a couple of hours some of their tasks, that would otherwise require to discuss with the IT team prioritisation, specs, testings, etc, and get something at best after 6 months.
I appreciate that IT depts hate seeing users coding stuff themselves but there is much to be said about the productivity of IT in large corporations.
And from a user point of view, I don't see why it would be bad practice. The only problem with scripting is viruses. But otherwise every application should be scriptable. There is always something that you would save time with a loop instead of having to do dozens of clicks.
Because 'economics'. Switching costs, network effects, etc... Here's my favorite book on the subject: http://amzn.to/1JMtX0X And yes, that's an affiliate link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10982630 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_barriers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
Also craigslist.org. That site looks like 1995 called and wants its web page back. It's a triumph of non-engineering. But that network effect. Man oh man.
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So? Many great projects start out as excel spreadsheets: someone has a problem, solves it with excel, then goes on to solve other problems with that spreadsheet. People use it and become dependent on it, but over time the thing becomes intractable. At that point in time, the functionality of the spreadsheet gets implemented by actual developers into some "engineered application." If you are suggesting to NOT start wi…
And once some devs turn it into an "engineered application" the change cycle jumps from minutes or hours to days, weeks or even months.
I often have the fantasy to write "Powered by COBOL" below the logo of my company.
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Also craigslist.org. That site looks like 1995 called and wants its web page back. It's a triumph of non-engineering. But that network effect. Man oh man.
What features would make craigslist better? I like it not in spite of its bareness but because of it.