Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)

reifyworks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 378 posts

Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)

#321

Post by [deleted] »

brootstrap wrote: post #262
ubermonkey wrote: post #259

There'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"

[deleted]

Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)

#322

Post by kowdermeister »

behringer wrote: post #295
swiley wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I can't not remember now the Salesforce for developers article :)

Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)

#323

Post by dvdsgl »

f_allwein wrote: post #34
dvdsgl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(OP concludes ‘programming should be more like Excel’. Glide’s mission is to apply spreadsheet programming to software in general. This is the most relevant comment, downvoters be darned!)

Yes, looks really cool!

Thanks!

Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)

#324

Post by dvdsgl »

kirubakaran wrote: post #264
dvdsgl wrote: post #6

This is exactly why we're building https://glideapps.com !

Looks great! Wishing you all the best! Few minor notes: - You've featured an app "Tournament of Books" but there are no links there. Both the title and the mock text conversation image can be links to that app - Interspersed fixed width font is jarring

Thank you for the notes — I will update!

Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)

#325

Post by dvdsgl »

thundergolfer wrote: post #120
dvdsgl wrote: post #6

This is exactly why we're building https://glideapps.com !

Hey, cool idea. At my company we've built a slack bot that sits in front of a google sheet to manage transactions (eg. borrows) in our office library.[1] I'd love to know whether this could be a Glide app, or whether we'd run into a technical limitation where we can't have users scan a book's ISBN and have that do a lookup in the sheet. 1. https://github.com/thundergolfer/library-management-slack-bo...

We don't have barcode scanning yet — it's a bit tricky to pull off as an iOS PWA.

Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)

#326

Post by Mvandenbergh »

mulmen wrote: post #188
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #179

It's interesting how often people's response to the manifest problems caused by people using Excel in unfortunate ways is to either suggest tools with much steeper learning curves or to suggest additional Excel features. 99% of these problems can be solved by proper training and standards appropriate to the problem and context at hand. For instance: Always separate and label inputs, calculations, and outputs. Documen…

Don't try to fix the user. If we lived in a world where your suggestions were followed Excel would indeed be an OK tool. Here in the real world however Excel has just the right combination of power and usability to shoot off every left foot in a five cube radius, and frequently does.

Sure, in general, don't try to fix the user.

In our context, we use Excel as a team in a work context where our rules make our specific tasks easier. It is much easier for people joining who are already proficient with Excel to follow some formatting guidelines than to invent a custom tool and learn to use that.

Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)

#327

Post by michaelmrose »

behringer wrote: post #295
swiley wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you regularly produce reports one would suppose that you would have an existing project template and know how that would allow a reasonable individual to deliver a result that isn't all wrong in a reasonable length of time not THAT dissimilar from the time to throw up a spreadsheet.

This also wouldn't silo the data in the users laptop, subject it to being destroyed because the user dropped it, and limit frequency of updates and access to how fast the user can respond to emails.

Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)

#328

Post by t0astbread »

mulmen wrote: post #183

Spreadsheets are fine. Excel is not. Excel conflates the ideas of data and presentation. This leads to an entire class of headaches that just aren't necessary. It's the desktop application equivalent of the string 'null'. If the spreadsheet layer (calculations and formatting) was separate from the data layer (types and values) then we could all be happy. Wrap that up with a UI that wasn't designed at an office in Red…

This sounds interesting but I don't quite understand. Is this idea documented somewhere more detailed?

Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)

#329

Post by yellowstuff »

ozim wrote: post #207
halfeatenpie wrote: post #26

I 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…

Yeah it works and you don't need support contracts and then: - 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 Then you get employee turn over where new employees don't get "arcane" knowledge passed down by people who left and took their spreadsheet foo with them. Excel does not have "access control", "auditing…

Fidelity didn't lose $1.3B, they miscalculated by $1.3B. The same with the other numbers you quote. Spreadsheets are error prone, but they still make sense for a lot of use cases.

https://www.cio.com/article/2438188/eight-of-the-worst-sprea...

Post reply on HN