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'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

theguardian.com

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Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#251

Post by jdougan »

Karellen wrote: post #176
valar_m wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel users can make mistakes, therefore Excel spreadsheets can't be audited? Is that your point?

My point is that if Excel spreadsheets can be audited, practically speaking, why are these major errors going unnoticed all the time ? Edit: My contention is that spreadsheets are in fact, very opaque, and it is incredibly difficult to check that every part of a spreadsheet is actually doing what its users think it is supposed to be doing. Specifically, I posit that it is harder to check a spreadsheet, than it is to…

I wonder if something like Lotus Improv would be easier to audit.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#252

Post by mopsi »

oneplane wrote: post #226
lolinder wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. When a process is important enough and repeated often enough, it will move into a more formal system. But most of the time spent running a business is at the fringes of what has been automated and formalized, and this isn't an accident—the automated processes are there precisely because they reduce or eliminate the human time. That means most of the humans (outside of front-line customer support or similar)…

That's great, but has little to do with the 'excel is my hammer, therefore everything is an excel-shaped nail' problem. Sure, like I wrote (twice already), you might need to have some malleable rows in front of you on your local workstation for some ephemeral work. But the actual workflow happens in the ERP system. Or the CRM. Or the PIM system. Or in Tableau. Or Databricks. And my beef is with people who think their…

I love that you mentioned PIM systems. I've worked with product information systems from small 3-man companies all the way to Fortune 500 companies, and without exception, their PIM systems have been total dogshit: slow, extremely unintuitive, limited in functionality and borderline unusable. When I need a list of product names, barcodes, weight and dimensions, nothing beats a simple Excel table that can be quickly transformed into whatever format I need at the moment. With the intensity of a thousand suns, I hate the "workflows" of having to create an account, sign in, browse products, put them into a cart, submit an order, and then wait for an email with a download link to some non-standard XML dump or broken CSV that their multi-million dollar PIM system produces. These systems have wasted entire lifetimes worth of their users' time. When it comes to sharing product information, nothing beats the ease of use and flexibility of a plain Excel table.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#253

Post by fancy_pantser »

cafard wrote: post #246

It may well be on HN that I read so-and-so's rule: It doesn't matter what the users say they want, they want Excel. Gratitude and an upvote to the person who can attach a name and citation to the rule.

here ya go ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24665282

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#254

Post by kjellsbells »

chaostheory wrote: post #245
jimnotgym wrote: post #114

I like the programmers on here telling the professional users that Excel is overblown and they could just use Numbers, OpenOffice or Google sheets. Imagine an accountant coming on here and telling you that you don't need vi, emacs, sublime text or VSCode. You certainly don't need your IDEs. After all it's perfectly possible to code in Notepad. You also don't need your languages. BASIC was perfectly good. The killer f…

The real problem isn’t with Excel itself. The problem is VBA and even Microsoft has been trying to kill it with JavaScript and future python support. I don’t feel that even MS can kill VBA since it’s so ubiquitous on Excel into the day that the majority of users transition to Excel online.

If MSFT are serious about this, they need to make migration easier. Right now they half heartedly point you at javascript and excel plugins and walk away. When Record Macro gives you the option of recording in JavaScript, not VBA, then we'll talk.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#255

Post by worewood »

chaps wrote: post #161
whall6 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. I work in investment banking and the reason I believe Excel will never go away is because of how easy it is to follow extremely complex financing structures. If I build a financial model, the 60 year old CFO needs to be able to understand it and agree with it. One other aspect is all of the shortcuts and hot keys. If you switched to a different software you’d have to relearn shortcuts that you…

Worked for a company whose automated options trading system was an.... excel spreadsheet. Every now and then I would need to RDP to a machine to RDP into another machine to restart it. Pain. So much pain.

At that point why not code something using the Interop APIs to programatically interface with the spreadsheet? It's a PITA to code but it works.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#257

Post by jimnotgym »

oneplane wrote: post #235
jimnotgym wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand 'workflows' in business. This is not a case of ingesting a large amount of data, transform, analyse etc. A normal finance team gets constant one off requests for information. Download something from the ERP, lookup against something else, pivot it by department. Then you get a follow up for the same but with x excluded, but they need it in 10 minutes before a meeting. Excel is great for that…

I doubt I misunderstand it since this is what I get paid for. I'm also not suggesting this is a case of large data, ETL or anything like that. (what I'm writing about is people using it for that anyway which is what we have other systems for and they should not be doing that) Our finance teams use excel too, but not as the 'do everything' tool that the article and plenty of comments here makes it out to be. They use…

> While we primarily deal with Dynamics (AX and 365), pretty much everything fits in there

I don't have much experience with Dynamics. My experience is mostly Oracle, SAP and Netsuite plus some bespoke.

I agree modern systems are very flexible. Everything could fit in there eventually if you are willing to pay, and willing to wait. But reporting can't wait.

The company I work for has 1000 factories, many sales offices. They use many different ERPs. I heard our division has 23! We were all acquired at different times, . My unit was acquired by a group that subsequently sold a part of itself. They are constantly trying to standardise on one system, but then acquire something else with more different systems. We get around this by using a consolidation system. Export, transform, load of only top line metrics..All via Excel, which is fully integrated into the consolidation system. The consolidation doesn't preserve line level data, so if someone needs it they have to ask for a spreadsheet. The IT just never catches up with the business.

The last mega Corp I worked for was simpler and more standardised, but still used different ERPs in different divisions. We were acquired by a group that was acquired by mega Corp, because they wanted a product a different division made. We were shoehorned in. We were on SAP already, but had to move to theirs...took 18 months to get to us. In the mean time...we used a consolidation system... via Excel

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#258

Post by Affric »

oneplane wrote: post #237
Affric wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Write a piece of software that ends Excel’s dominance and then I will take your opinion seriously. I hate Excel for many reasons but it is king for a reason.

Which 'opinion' would that be. The one where I write about anecdotes from the real world? We have software that does what is needed. An ERP, a CRM, a HMI, a case management system for legal etc. No need to have everyone on every team rebuild that in excel.

That all iterate too slowly and don’t put the development in the hands of the people doing the job.

Excel is near universal and flexible. It’s not a hammer. It’s a swiss army knife.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#259

Post by jimnotgym »

Karellen wrote: post #176
valar_m wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel users can make mistakes, therefore Excel spreadsheets can't be audited? Is that your point?

My point is that if Excel spreadsheets can be audited, practically speaking, why are these major errors going unnoticed all the time ? Edit: My contention is that spreadsheets are in fact, very opaque, and it is incredibly difficult to check that every part of a spreadsheet is actually doing what its users think it is supposed to be doing. Specifically, I posit that it is harder to check a spreadsheet, than it is to…

Because not all spreadsheets are audited? Just because they can doesn't mean they are. Also a financial audit is very different in what it is looking for, compared to a cyber security audit, for instance. They are looking to prove the accounts show a true and fair view of the company, not 'are your formulas perfect'. They are more likely to copy out your raw data and run their own analysis.

Answering your edit, not all spreadsheets are opaque either. We design ours to be audited.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#260

Post by __mharrison__ »

Karellen wrote: post #168
jimnotgym wrote: post #114

I like the programmers on here telling the professional users that Excel is overblown and they could just use Numbers, OpenOffice or Google sheets. Imagine an accountant coming on here and telling you that you don't need vi, emacs, sublime text or VSCode. You certainly don't need your IDEs. After all it's perfectly possible to code in Notepad. You also don't need your languages. BASIC was perfectly good. The killer f…

Excel spreadsheets are auditable? If that's the case, why do studies show that so many Excel spreadsheets have major errors in them? https://theconversation.com/spreadsheet-errors-can-have-disa... https://phys.org/news/2024-08-business-spreadsheets-critical... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=study+excel+spreadsheets+contain+e...

The ability to audit doesn't necessarily mean that the "code" in a spreadsheet is easy to read, only that it is easy to see...
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