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Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

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Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#181

Post by sanderjd »

GiorgioG wrote: post #37
mabbo wrote: post #18

I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel. But few of the people using it realize they're programming. It's a brilliant reactive data programming model that makes intuitive sense to non-technical users. They feel empowered to use it to solve problems right now with a computer. They experiment with it, try things, Google how to do more things- just like any programmer does. And they feel…

When I consulted at a health insurance company (a Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee with 1000 employees, 200 IT staff) about 10 years ago, I was absolutely horrified that the system of record for health care plan data was Excel spreadsheets. They had staff who would update the claims processing system based on thousands of spreadsheets. When you called customer service, the CSR app would auto-open the member's plan inf…

Yeah, updating these sorts of insurance systems was a huge line of work for Rails devs in the late '00s.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#182

Post by alexilliamson »

Something that almost always gets left out of these discussions is how quickly you can spin a new dataset into a highly polished, ready-to-print-for-executive-review report IF YOU HAVE MASTERED EXCEL HOTKEYS. For context, I have meaningful experience doing data analysis using various combinations of SQL, python, ruby, R/tidyverse, and excel with lightning-fast fingers. In a previous role, I regularly needed to summarize new datasets to executives, and I found that nothing was quicker and more flexible than the following workflow: copying and pasting raw data into an unformatted "data" sheet, creating a new sheet from a well-formatted template, and quickly writing whatever "SUMIFS" prototypes I needed then filling out the rest of the sheet by copying those formulas across cells.

Often excel users are stereotyped as having error-prone, sporadic workflows where they are often mistakenly writing over raw data, etc. And that is often a valid stereotype. However, I believe that there exist scenarios where excel is part of the optimal workflow.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#183

Post by osullivj »

microcolonel wrote: post #35
mabbo wrote: post #18

I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel. But few of the people using it realize they're programming. It's a brilliant reactive data programming model that makes intuitive sense to non-technical users. They feel empowered to use it to solve problems right now with a computer. They experiment with it, try things, Google how to do more things- just like any programmer does. And they feel…

I've been working on a spreadsheet which is more amenable to embedding in programs (compiling to an IR which can be translated to high level languages or [eventually] compiler IRs like those of LLVM or GCC). I worked at a company where months were spent recreating models from a spreadsheet produced by subject matter experts, and this was a major cost. A spreadsheet optimized for integration into software build proces…

Interesting: optimized for integration is what I've been doing too. If you've got a minute to take a look at the links in my profile I'd be keen to hear your feedback.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#184

Post by gbrown »

Robotbeat wrote: post #174
mabbo wrote: post #18

I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel. But few of the people using it realize they're programming. It's a brilliant reactive data programming model that makes intuitive sense to non-technical users. They feel empowered to use it to solve problems right now with a computer. They experiment with it, try things, Google how to do more things- just like any programmer does. And they feel…

Completely agree. It's common to tell kids (and everyone) that they need to "learn to code." That is what Excel already is! And it's incredibly powerful, especially if you don't have any other coding skills. But, of course, it's messy. When tens of millions of people can each write their own programs and easily modify them and change them to suit their own needs without needing to recompile or anything, then you get…

> ...and, in fact, that's also what you'd get if you taught everyone how to program Python in high school instead of Excel.

I disagree. Python leaves a readable instruction set, while Excel buries the logic in an opaque two dimensional grid of cells (plus or minus atrocious VBA). I think this gives a better ladder for people to improve their skills to the point of not producing unmaintainable garbage.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#185

Post by tinus_hn »

ransom1538 wrote: post #60
mabbo wrote: post #18

I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel. But few of the people using it realize they're programming. It's a brilliant reactive data programming model that makes intuitive sense to non-technical users. They feel empowered to use it to solve problems right now with a computer. They experiment with it, try things, Google how to do more things- just like any programmer does. And they feel…

You can do crazy shit in excel. After someone opens an excel sheet - download a webpage and save it to disk? no problem. Lets load other excel files in memory and run their scripts too! Don't worry about your computer fan - while we scan your disk for stuff. Just state "On Error Resume Next" and start scanning hardware. Company email accounts are stuffed with one off sketchy excel attachments. https://stackoverflow.c…

The idea is that general Excel files do not run macros. They need to be saved with a special extension and you need to manually approve macros, with warnings if the file is in a location where other users can write to the file.

I have no idea how watertight this is though, it’s Microsoft quality (and some of the most ancient code they have) so I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#186

Post by alkonaut »

Doesn’t excel allow using any data source for the data? So you can e.g populate a table from a web service/database etc?

The thing with excel is that it’s repl-like and lets you sketch up a solution. If users could build more data driven apps (I don’t doubt it’s possible but it should be easy) like those Access popularized then you could start off using sketch data and finish with using a “single source of truth”.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#187

Post by tinus_hn »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #166
phkahler wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS access is often a way better tool for what people do. The problem is that it requires a bit more work up front, a little more abstraction, and usually some programming. Having said that, most companies have people in IT that can help out something like that together for people but that's not their job.

Does access have a spreadsheet view for bulk editing?

Yes, it’s called the datasheet view.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#188

Post by linearithmic »

One reason why Excel should never be used for anything real is because it lacks type safety. For example if you have to sum a columns of numbers and one of them was mistakenly input as text, rather than throwing an error, it will just ignore that entry. There are lots of other problems related to type safety as well.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#189

Post by bthallplz »

iagovar wrote: post #105
crispyambulance wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! I happen to use and advocate for R/RStudio for ad-hoc work (I spin it as "excel on steroids" when I am trying to convince someone). But it is hard to pull people away from something that has worked for them. The alternatives to excel in the past have been really, really unpleasant to use. A now EOL product from Oracle comes to mind. It is called "Discoverer"-- that's right, "Discover" + "er". It is a turgid POS…

IMO if you really want non-tech users to become more technical and use DBs as single source of truth, use KNIME. It still needs proper reporting addons though, but you can export data, even to tableau.

I saw a presentation about KNIME but was unfamiliar with many of the processes that it allows one to string together to build a workflow, so the notion of building a workflow myself seemed very daunting. Do you think it would allow one to build workflows for basic stuff and gradually grow in their confidence with it?

The presentation mentioned that the company is/was working on reporting add-ons, I think.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#190

Post by peatmoss »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #165
sheetjs wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my career in business software has still mostly been about converting spreadsheets into more "proper" applications. Still true for many people in 2017. @patio11 probably said it best: > Every spreadsheet shared in a business is an angel announcing another SaaS app still needs to be built. https://twitter.com/patio11/status/655674551615942657 FWIW we ended up in business software after one of our open source librari…

No. An domain-specific SaaS app takes all the power away from the people writing their spreadsheet programs. Only one app is needed, a hosted spreadsheet with backup and versioning an replication. The only domain-specific business is in writing plugins.

I agree that purpose-specific tools aren't the answer, unless the question was, "can I have a straight jacket?"

Flip side, my feeling is that, if an analysis was worth doing, it's probably worth doing right. And to do it right, it should probably be done in a way that one can show their work. I like where the R community in particular has gone in dropping the barrier to reproducible analysis to roughly the same place as Excel.

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