131–140 of 282 posts
Didn’t he say this backward? I feel like I’m about to lose my mind
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.
It enables you to load CSVs and write SQL on those CSVs.
The main benefit is that it is very fast when compared to Excel or Python.
Excel cannot really handle 1GB CSV file. With Python, just loading 1GB file and iterating through every line probably already takes more than a minutes.
Superintendent pushes most logic to C and Sqlite, so it's super fast.
Here's the app: https://superintendent.app
* 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…
You're correct, but this entirely misses the point of the article. It's not calling for the end of spreadsheets -- it's stating that there's an unspoken problem that demands our attention. Spreadsheets aren't 100% reliable for use cases where you need to collaborate and share immutable health records. Especially during a time of global emergency when tensions are heightened. Spreadsheets don't impose validation, sche…
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.
“For example, if you spend 100 florins on wool, that is recorded as a credit of 100 florins in your cash account and a debit of 100 florins worth of wool in your assets account.” Didn’t he say this backward? I feel like I’m about to lose my mind
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really don't think excel is accessible. I don't know how to do anything in it. If I had to make a plot I'd have to search for an article that would probably be about the same word length as the one I'd find searching "how to make a plot in python." Imo excel isn't easier for the lay person, it's just entrenched because you have people now in the workforce using excel since windows 95. It allows people to become pro…
Conversely, I am a professional programmer and I haven’t found any easier way to plot your data. What could be easier than highlight your data, insert, scatter chart?
* 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…
We might even argue that spreadsheets were already used in 1295 BCE, as shown in Fig. 1.1 of [0].
* 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…
This! As programmers, it is easy to list N reasons why spreadsheets suck and deserve to die. But the reality is that it is the most ubiquitous business software and the non-tech/business users would rather be in a spreadsheet than anywhere else. Companies run on spreadsheets, even if they have the best "data stack" and tools. Because few, if any, software can beat the * flexibility (throw data anywhere and link it to…
These were not small companies either, ~$800M in yearly revenue for one, and ~$150M for the other.
Then, afterwards, the end value would be massaged to what felt right. And yet, these sheets were seen as part of the "secret sauce" of the business.
It's one of the reasons I really wanted out.
Programmers have a reputation of being arrogant assholes, but I think this push-back and ridiculing other industries of using excel for stuff like this is completely justified. Excel spreadsheets let these people FEEL productive and like masters of their own fate with a bunch of numbers neatly encapsulated in their own little cells in a table, but their actual usefulness is questionable. For construction, it gives a rough feel for a project, but a lot of it is smoke and mirrors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This! As programmers, it is easy to list N reasons why spreadsheets suck and deserve to die. But the reality is that it is the most ubiquitous business software and the non-tech/business users would rather be in a spreadsheet than anywhere else. Companies run on spreadsheets, even if they have the best "data stack" and tools. Because few, if any, software can beat the * flexibility (throw data anywhere and link it to…
I used to work at in construction as an estimator and we used spreadsheets. No backups, no version control, a single value change took 10s of minutes to propagate through the many sheets in the file. We fixed errors when we saw them, but I always felt it was an exercise in pointlessness. These were not small companies either, ~$800M in yearly revenue for one, and ~$150M for the other. Then, afterwards, the end value…
Jesus... want to start a competitor to these guys!? Email me