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Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

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Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#311

Post by PurpleRamen »

j_s wrote: post #295
PurpleRamen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has a javascript-interpreter installed.

If you are talking about the browser, they are all locked down to prevent JavaScript execution from local files. If you are talking about WScript on Windows (I doubt it), it has an even worse reputation than PowerShell.

Yes, browser.

Are you talking about Same-Origin-Policy? This shouldn't prevent a script being executed local. It only limits what it can do. Because of security, there is heavy sandboxing with javascript.

Anyway, it wouldn't be hard to transform browsers in full fledged local scripting-engines, without dismanteling security.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#312

Post by danzig13 »

Excel+PowerQuery is and will continue to be the most capable and accessible scratch pad people use. That is: get data out of your central system(s), crunch it in Excel, feed the results back to your central system and reference the spreadsheet as a record of your calculations.

The big problem is when people promote it to collaboration and workflow management software.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#313

Post by Declanomous »

tmzt wrote: post #297
agar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Version control in Excel VBA is easy. Just do a Save As..."Mission Critical Finance Model v2.xlsm", then "Mission Critical Finance Model v3.xlsm", then "Mission Critical Finance Model v3a (temp with changes for Jim).xlsm" and then "Mission Critical Finance Model v4 (maybe-trying to merge 3a back-DO NOT USE).xlsm" and so on...

Or you could: unzip *.xlsm git add . Probably with some custom diff scripts for the xml files.

I did most of this in Access.

Also, I wasn't allowed to install version control of any sort, so that's really the bigger problem.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#314

Post by Havoc »

dang wrote: post #232
Havoc wrote: post #159

Every time I (as a finance supposed "professional") comment on finance article on hn I get downvoted to hell. Note to self - stick to IT stuff when interacting with IT crowd. Yes dear IT crew, in the IT world virtualisation is in this month and docker next and kubernetes the month after. Finance side it's excel as swissknife this year and probably the next 5 years too. Get over it. Anyway - see also djtriptych's post…

You'll get no quarrel from me about the supremacy of Excel, but could you please stop including complaints about downvotes in your HN comments? It's unsubstantive and breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . I looked at your comment history and it's far from true that you're always getting downvoted. I realize it can feel that way. Everybody gets downvoted; the thing to do is (a)…

Thanks - I appreciate the proactiveness

>could you please stop including complaints about downvotes in your HN comments? It's unsubstantive and breaks the site guidelines

Duly noted. Didn't know it's against policy & will comply going forward.

>you're always getting downvoted. I realize it can feel that way. Everybody gets downvoted;

Fair enough. I don't actually mind downvotes - it's just internet points - my observation was largely driven by me doing better on voting on stuff that isn't my expertise (tech / VC / programming) than stuff that is (finance).

Either way - it's more of a "that's interesting" observation than a "I'm angry".

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#315

Post by qwerty456127 »

clouddrover wrote: post #225
qwerty456127 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Everyone talks about trying to create a new type of programming environment, something intuitive and visual and that lets you think in new and creative ways. Excel is exactly that" - yes, it is, except it is a way too old already though all the notable competitors seem dedicating all the efforts to reproducing its legacy as closely as possible. I'd love to see an attempt to design a brand-new spreadsheet from scratc…

How do you mean it's "way too old already"? If it works, it works. You're guaranteed to introduce problems every time you introduce change so there needs to be a strong reason to do. Why change what works?

> How do you mean it's "way too old already"

I mean many obvious ways it can be improved have been discovered during the time passed.

Although it obviously makes no sense to give up the whole thing just because it has been introduced long ago it still is not a bad idea to consider minor and major improvements or even rethinking the whole idea occasionally. We could still be using good old typewriters/teletypes if the fact they worked was stopping us from thinking about inventing tools to do the same job with less labour and more fun.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#316

Post by dm319 »

cleetus wrote: post #286
dm319 wrote: post #131

I think this whole thread is too strongly biased to assuming that millions of analysts know what the ideal skills and tools for their job are, rather than they started with Excel and they continued with Excel. The other thing is that people here are comparing moving from Excel to some sort of webapp/db or general purpose language, when actually they should be comparing to numerical computing tools. R is a far more ro…

And RStudio is an incredible IDE that can help ease that transition. My boss is an incredibly smart guy, but he worked in consulting for 15+ years and sometimes cannot view data from outside of an Excel perspective. It can be frustrating to have him think that every problem is a vlookup and pivot table from being solved. I think it's easy to become a bit myopic with Excel. It's like if the only tool you have is a ham…

Yes, and after all, it's not as if learning R will prevent you trying out some models in Excel. In a life-time career, a 40-60 hour commitment for a new string to your bow that is as powerful as R is not a big investment.

Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

#317

Post by sls »

ghostly_s wrote: post #299
gaius wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. I dunno if you have seen old movies where there is a guy at a desk and in front of him is a pad - built into the desk - with large stacked sheets of paper tucked in at the corners to hold them down, A3 size or larger. This was used to just do any quick bit of writing, make a note, do a calculation, sketch something out, whatever. When a page had been sufficiently dooodled on it was just peeled off the t…

Derail but, no, I've never seen such a thing as you describe. Any movies in particular that feature this?

If you search for "desk pad" on Amazon, Google images, etc. you'll see them. A large rectangle of paper, typically being held in a base at the corners, top and corners, etc., sometimes printed with a grid, calendar, etc.

My father's desk featured one of these, used exactly as described.

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