I love spreadsheets. They are many people's first experience with programming. Cells are essentially a functional programming environment. People have a much easier time learning basic functional programming and spreadsheets help a lot.
I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
291–300 of 378 posts
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it will be easier to solve those problems in the Excel development space than it will be to export the Excel solutions to another solution domain. Also the kind of mistakes you've described can (and do) happen in other programming domains that are deemed more respectable.
Unfortunately no. Excel is hamstrung by having to maintain backwards compatibility for an endless number of hacks. For instance, it is notorious that 0.1 + 0.2 != 0.3 in binary exponent floating point math. Excel does funny stuff with number formatting that hides this, but it is like having a bubble under a plastic sheet that moves someplace else when you push on it -- numeric strangeness appears in different places.…
To be fair in Javascript 0.1 + 0.2 === 0.3 also is false :). Not saying that Javascript is a great programming language.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#293I knew an admin assistant years ago who was an absolute Excel wizard. I liked to just sit and watch her work, it was like watching a pro-level gamer.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
True that. I used to both back then, first a user and then a SAP system guy. For me it is always a death spiral: people don't trust the system or it is too cumbersome, they use Excel, the system gets even less reliable, the use Excel even more,... and so on. I always saw it as my role a system guy to give users a system they can use and then force them to actually use it. Because, when providing the systemnI talked t…
Agree but slight modification - goal should always be for the users to be able to do their main functional tasks in-application and maintain it as the system of record. But there will always be a use for Excel as a tool for informal data-monkeying and analysis - exporting a table and doing some pivots to summarize or use a different view. Non-technical users will always expect this capability and flock back to it. No…
You describe the ideal world. Tools like SAP or Business Warehouse suck at data crunching and nor everyone can use Python for example. Even ops can under the right circumstances be okish offline in Excel as long as results are imported into e.g. SAP to assure data integrity.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Fidelity's "Minus Sign Mistake": loss of $1.3 billion - TransAlta "Clerical Error": loss of $24 million - Fannie Mae "Honest mistake": loss of $1.3 billion Weigh that against makes $X Billion due to correct usage of Excel multiplied thousands and thousands of times over. Survivorship bias at it's finest. Excel isn't perfect and has notable downsides, but work gets done all of the time on them for the aforemention…
I’m not convinced there’s a such thing as “correct usage of excel.” What a lot of companies do is just scare entry level employees into being very careful. My friend’s girlfriend works at a place like this and people just accept all the problems with manually editing large spreadsheets because “that’s just life.” Anything in excel is a hack and most of its users don’t know any better.
What's your solution? That the manager who wanted some report comes to you and begs you to do it and in 6 months it's finally delivered and all wrong?
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#296People here still don’t get it. It’s not that spreadsheet are great for non programmers, they are great for programmers too. The combination of UI and live calculation engine is unique. How long does it take to make a pivot table with conditional formatting in Python? How long does it take to have input validation in JavaScript? Sure maybe a couple hours. But it takes literally 2 seconds in Excel. Couple Excel with a…
Implementation time vs maintainability
I will spend a couple of hours to do a good job on something that will inevitably be in use and under continued development for many years.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#297I work in critical infrastructure planning. My organization builds software in R, Python, and other programming languages customized for these major organizations. So many critical infrastructures, billions of dollars in planning, and just systems are built out of Excel. It's amazing. You'd assume something that services millions of people a day would have some more sophisticated and customized solution, but you're w…
But how do you handle sharing? The main issue with Excel, and its main downfall, is the sharing of data and versioning, with person X has an older version of person Y by a few hours and needs an email of person X to keep doing her job.
Honestly, people handle sharing via Google Drive/Dropbox/Enterprise solution plus file naming convention.
The current enterprise network I'm on? They block Box, Dropbox, and a lot of other solutions. They instead use Citrix's ShareFile and a NAS setup with file naming.
Also remember, surprisingly most of these critical infrastructure planning isn't handled by hundreds of people, at most it's a team of 5 people who then present their findings and suggestions to the C-suite decision makers. It's not as big of a problem as many people think.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#298There's nothing WRONG with the spreadsheet model, and never has been. It's immensely powerful and useful, and the growth in capability over the life of a product like Excel is remarkable and enviable. Excel is perhaps Microsoft's greatest product. The problem with it -- and there IS a problem -- is really a problem of applicability. Excel, like Lotus before it, is the first place many people encounter the ability to…
Yeah i agree with you. Excel is very powerful to some degree but like all things it can be abused. somewhere in a cube farm i can hear the shouts... "Hey Karen did you get the latest budget sheet?" "Is it budget_final_v2_2019.xlsx?" "Damnit Karen that is from last week dear god dont tell me you sent that to corporate!! We are on budget_final_FINAL_v4.xlsx"
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Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately no. Excel is hamstrung by having to maintain backwards compatibility for an endless number of hacks. For instance, it is notorious that 0.1 + 0.2 != 0.3 in binary exponent floating point math. Excel does funny stuff with number formatting that hides this, but it is like having a bubble under a plastic sheet that moves someplace else when you push on it -- numeric strangeness appears in different places.…
To be fair in Javascript 0.1 + 0.2 === 0.3 also is false :). Not saying that Javascript is a great programming language.
It's a problem in all mainstream programming languages that Excel has a strange answer to.
The trouble with it is that it is a big distraction to the "non-professional programmer" who uses tools like Excel.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#300I work in critical infrastructure planning. My organization builds software in R, Python, and other programming languages customized for these major organizations. So many critical infrastructures, billions of dollars in planning, and just systems are built out of Excel. It's amazing. You'd assume something that services millions of people a day would have some more sophisticated and customized solution, but you're w…
Can I ask, what is "critical infrastructure planning"? Googled it, but wasn't sure as it appears to transcend many contexts.
What I specifically handle is Water. Starting from the natural system (weather generator + Hydrology) through to the human system (Demand model (showing increase over time and temperature increase) + system operations (dams, reservoirs, treatment facilities, pipes, etc.) to delivery to customers.
The big problem we answer is "How can we continue delivering water to people while under climate change uncertainty? What policies or new infrastructure can we build so we remain robust and resilient under these new conditions?"