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The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

timharford.com

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Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#201

Post by helsinkiandrew »

Jaepa wrote: post #5

This was adapted from Tim Harharford's podcast Cautionary Tales eps Wrong Tools Cost Lives https://timharford.com/2021/05/cautionary-tales-wrong-tools-... If you have not listened to the series I highly recommend it. His episode "LaLa Land: Galileo’s Warning" is by far one of my favorite pieces of media. In brief it is why redundant tightly coupled fail safes will often lead to cascading failures. https://timharford.…

For more by Tim Harford checkout the "More or Less" podcast "explaining the numbers and statistics in the news and in life."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrss1/episodes/downloads

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#202

Post by yodelshady »

This simple dilemma comes up again and again: the people who made this can a) use Excel, warts and all, b) contract out for a proper system, and wait at least a year. Who am I kidding... a decade.

There is simply no point complaining about Excel unless you have a viable alternative, and that alternative is not coming from traditional IT depts.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#203

Post by thefr0g »

kwyjobojoe wrote: post #102
recursive wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> written in python that used Excel behind the scenes

That's from my worst nightmares :(

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#205

Post by dsr_ »

zoomastigophore wrote: post #189
Andy_G11 wrote: post #174

'000s of rows of data in a spreadsheet - sigh. But say 'database' to some people and they hear 'The Devil'. Excel is a glorious tool which welcomes all, the savvy and the unskilled but imaginative newbies alike. There is something about all those little cells that presents an itch everyone wants to scratch, and you just know that for some that scratching is going to produce something akin to a spreadsheet version of…

I think one of the main problem with databases is how do you populate them. I wish there were simple-as-Excel frontends for databases where a normal user could input his data like in preformated Excel table without having to deal with the database mechanics.

What do we know about most database projects? They need CRUD plus queries.

What's the easiest way to generate a CRUD form?

HyperCard.

We need a ubiquitous HyperCard equivalent that talks to the Real Database(TM) of your choice on the backend -- sqlite, postgresql, mysql/mariadb, Oracle, MS-SQL, whatever -- with easy functions for "get a sequence number", "get a unique identifier cookie" and "do this block atomically".

I bet there's a few out there right now.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#207

Post by mavhc »

kitkat_new wrote: post #204
mavhc wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we really wish for is a modern replacement for MS Access

modern in what way?

Faster, better at handling multiple users, smarter, web based.

And also free with whatever package you're already paying for :-)

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#208

Post by imwillofficial »

Andy_G11 wrote: post #174

'000s of rows of data in a spreadsheet - sigh. But say 'database' to some people and they hear 'The Devil'. Excel is a glorious tool which welcomes all, the savvy and the unskilled but imaginative newbies alike. There is something about all those little cells that presents an itch everyone wants to scratch, and you just know that for some that scratching is going to produce something akin to a spreadsheet version of…

I found your point to be incomprehensible.

Re: The Tyranny of Spreadsheets

#210

Post by zoomastigophore »

otherme123 wrote: post #195
zoomastigophore wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the main problem with databases is how do you populate them. I wish there were simple-as-Excel frontends for databases where a normal user could input his data like in preformated Excel table without having to deal with the database mechanics.

Sadly databases are hard because data is hard. I've seen people trying to stuff one-to-many relationships in a single Excel tab duplicating the one side as many times as needed, e.g. Author_A Book_1 Author_A Book_2 Author_A Book_3 Author_B Book_4 Author_B Book_5 Another strategy I've seen is to stuff the many-side into a single cell, splitted with some less used symbol like |, ; or : . I'm curious to find what would…

I agree data is hard.

If we could provide a properly designed database which has already defined datatypes but that would be as easy to fill for a standard user as a preformated Excel table that would be great. You're right, Access has this simplicity, I just wish such tools would be available out-of-the-box for other DB engine.

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