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Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

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Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#151

Post by maxcoder4 »

darby_eight wrote: post #125
makeitdouble wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are billion dollar mistakes only because they've allowed for trillions in improvements in the first place. People choose these system with loose conversions over and over again because it's an advantage up to a point. Of course it becomes a liability when expanded too much and used in now critical systems, but IMHO the tradeoff usually ends as a net positive. Which is why, over and over we build more of…

> I think these are billion dollar mistakes only because they've allowed for trillions in improvements in the first place. That's a hell of a claim to try and demonstrate when its initial advantage is far from obvious to begin with.

when I type "age" into a spreadsheet it is text. When I type "23" into a spreadsheet I can later use it as a number without converting to another type. People want and expect this behavior. What is your preferred solution to this problem?

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#152

Post by darby_eight »

maxcoder4 wrote: post #151
darby_eight wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think these are billion dollar mistakes only because they've allowed for trillions in improvements in the first place. That's a hell of a claim to try and demonstrate when its initial advantage is far from obvious to begin with.

when I type "age" into a spreadsheet it is text. When I type "23" into a spreadsheet I can later use it as a number without converting to another type. People want and expect this behavior. What is your preferred solution to this problem?

> People want and expect this behavior.

A) I have no clue where you got this from. It seems like a convenient assumption, but not one that's easily verified, especially when folks are introduced to the dangers of such an approach.

B) Giving people control over how the data is interpreted outside of the default interpretation seems like a no-brainer. I don't really rely on default interpretation of anything, especially in the context of spreadsheets given how eager they are to interpret data in unexpected ways, but based on this thread it seems like it's rather difficult to turn off the date conversion behavior in excel.

C) I was replying to a comment about implicit conversions, which is far larger than just the context of excel spreadsheets.

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#153

Post by [deleted] »

dacryn wrote: post #84
makeitdouble wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are billion dollar mistakes only because they've allowed for trillions in improvements in the first place. People choose these system with loose conversions over and over again because it's an advantage up to a point. Of course it becomes a liability when expanded too much and used in now critical systems, but IMHO the tradeoff usually ends as a net positive. Which is why, over and over we build more of…

it would be so easy to just implement an opt-out function, but Microsoft doesn't want to. There doesn't have to be a tradeoff if you make it optional.

[deleted]

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#154

Post by layer8 »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #3
k310 wrote: post #2

2020 article with this update: Update October 24th, 2023, 11:25AM ET: Microsoft has updated Excel on Windows and macOS, adding a toggle to turn off automatic data conversion. The original version of this article continues below.

How did we not have that feature in, like... 1993?

Because people wanted to enter dates in familiar formats in 1993.

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#155

Post by makeitdouble »

darby_eight wrote: post #152
maxcoder4 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when I type "age" into a spreadsheet it is text. When I type "23" into a spreadsheet I can later use it as a number without converting to another type. People want and expect this behavior. What is your preferred solution to this problem?

> People want and expect this behavior. A) I have no clue where you got this from. It seems like a convenient assumption, but not one that's easily verified, especially when folks are introduced to the dangers of such an approach. B) Giving people control over how the data is interpreted outside of the default interpretation seems like a no-brainer. I don't really rely on default interpretation of anything, especiall…

Wouldn't your approach be 100% covered by current type implementation ?

As a workflow, if every time you create a new spreadsheet you first define all the column types and constraints, you're in the world you're describing. Passing around that spreadsheet would also keep these settings as long as it's not converted and everyone's version is compatible.

That means you get the best of both worlds: people who care about strict types can be as strict as they want, other people can benefit from auto conversions.

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#156

Post by makeitdouble »

acdha wrote: post #142
makeitdouble wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Channeling my inner QA person, this breaks in many subtle and not so subtle ways: - people love to export as CSV. And I kinda understand them, csv looks simple enough, what could go wrong ? - other spreadsheet softs need to recognize the same field and act the same way. Google Sheets, LibreOffice, KingSoft's one etc. Not counting old office versions that aren't updated anymore, because the owner doesn't want to move…

It might be easier to think about as the difference between perfection and practical improvements. Right now 100% of Excel users are at risk of silent data corruption. The proposed change would allow people to reliably prevent this category of corruption for all of the documents they create and over time that’d become a majority in their field. This would also offer the path for changing the default over time to safe…

> Right now 100% of Excel users are at risk of silent data corruption.

They already added an option in the settings last year to deal with this specific issue. Their solution isn't perfect either, they made the tradeoff to optimize for up to date excel users.

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#157

Post by imtringued »

nbadg wrote: post #103
shaan7 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it cynicism but I think humans just prefer things to be implicit. I've been annoyed by how people do not want to be specific, but then rant about how someone did not understand exactly what they wanted. A certain CEO says that we won't need programming languages because you will be able to program AI systems with natural language. Well, the problem with natural language is not that we do not have the tech, it is…

The thing is, most of the time, you can actually have both. You just have to spend the time to build systems that way. To use the example from the article: spreadsheets could use strongly-typed columns, but guess the column type automatically based on the values entered. When things go right, it'd be just as easy as today, but if things go wrong, you always have an escape hatch: with a little more work, you can manua…

Excel already works that way. The scientists insist on CSV though, which is a format that isn't supported by Excel.

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#158

Post by imtringued »

darby_eight wrote: post #152
maxcoder4 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when I type "age" into a spreadsheet it is text. When I type "23" into a spreadsheet I can later use it as a number without converting to another type. People want and expect this behavior. What is your preferred solution to this problem?

> People want and expect this behavior. A) I have no clue where you got this from. It seems like a convenient assumption, but not one that's easily verified, especially when folks are introduced to the dangers of such an approach. B) Giving people control over how the data is interpreted outside of the default interpretation seems like a no-brainer. I don't really rely on default interpretation of anything, especiall…

>but based on this thread it seems like it's rather difficult to turn off the date conversion behavior in excel.

Is this some kind of joke? Ever used Excel?

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#159

Post by imtringued »

Amezarak wrote: post #119
acdha wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the option was implemented as a user preference which isn’t stored in the file. The right way to do this would be to add the flag as a file header, and give people a UI control to set it by default. That way you’d always see spreadsheets as the person who gave it to you did, and you would create new ones with your preferred behavior.

I don't understand what's wrong with the existing solution of: Right Click > Format Cells > Text. Set the data type of the column and Excel will not fiddle with it. Let it stay implicit and Excel will to guess. This change is saved in the file. The article only slightly touches on this: converting to CSV and losing all the Excel formatting and then opening it in Excel again.

Excel doesn't support CSV so expecting that to work is like expecting your car to fly.

Just because they have something they call CSV import or export doesn't mean the feature actually works.

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#160

Post by imtringued »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #117
makeitdouble wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual, I think it's a lot more nuanced than that. An option was added last year [0] the way you propose it, but until then users already had the option to mark the columns as text. The same way we have to deal with any data where auto detection might be problematic: explicitely set a type, and potentially a format. But of course that's bothersome, sometime people forget to do it, sometimes they don't even know how…

> but until then users already had the option to mark the columns as text This only works on Excel files though, which save a type for columns/cells. With CSV files, Excel would just auto-format them. I guess you could save everything as xls/xlsx, but I shouldn't have to use a vendors file format because they're threatening to corrupt my data if I don't.

CSV doesn't do what you want and excel doesn't support CSV files. Why insist on a completely wrong tool and file format combination?

If the excel developers cared about CSV support they would have added more settings to the CSV import tool that let you specify everything. Every single data base tool that lets you import CSV files has worked better than Excel. It simply means Excel wasn't built to import CSV files. Tough luck.

.xlsx file extension is well supported by many open source libraries. If you insist on working with Excel then you should use the appropriate file format, which is .xlsx. I do that all the time and it just works.

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