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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

#41

Post by xbmcuser »

This is one of the things LLM's have helped me move off excel. I have an office pc that has microsoft windows + office and home pc that only has linux mint and libreoffice. Previously for anything related to excel I would by habit remote into my office pc to get it done.

I started asking how to do stuff on libreoffice on chat gpt and google gemini. And looking at how detailed explanations we have on how to use spreadsheets explained in easy to understand terms for comparably non tech users a lot of stuff became easy to do. As llm had detailed usually correct answers and suggestions. I would have learned my way to doing it anyway but LLM's brought the learning curve down from a few hours to a few min so was willing to just use libre office.

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

#42

Post by ripped_britches »

NeoTar wrote: post #11

Excel can be really great — it’s been said that a huge amount of the world‘s programming is actually done in excel (summing a column of numbers is, after all, a very primitive programme). I wish there were better tools to help excel users migrate to more formal coding. Something that allows the immediate visibility and accessibility of Excel code, but avoids some of the problems of updating a formula in one place, bu…

I got into professional programming via VBA in Excel

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

#43

Post by biddendidden »

baq wrote: post #15
NeoTar wrote: post #11

Excel can be really great — it’s been said that a huge amount of the world‘s programming is actually done in excel (summing a column of numbers is, after all, a very primitive programme). I wish there were better tools to help excel users migrate to more formal coding. Something that allows the immediate visibility and accessibility of Excel code, but avoids some of the problems of updating a formula in one place, bu…

Best part: Excel supports your example and many other similar quality of programmers life use cases and has been for years if not decades (e.g. named ranges and tables). For some reason people don’t use them.

[dead]

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

#44

Post by 486sx33 »

Because I’m so used to excel, I really have a hard time using sheets, it’s different enough to be annoying and easy enough to export to xls to open in excel and do things the way I want to.

One thing I’ve had success with lately is chat-gpt 4o to manipulate large sheets. Sometimes it is really dumb and ruins my data, so always keep the last iteration handy… Sometimes it does some really great things, especially comparing multiple excel files.

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

#45

Post by fifilura »

MostlyStable wrote: post #34
fifilura wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Sheets worked fine for me. The UI is intuitive and stripped down. And it has much better networking/collaboration support compared to Microsoft that has it bolted on.

I may be being silly about this, and I probably should at least try how well google sheets works for me as a regular part of my workflow, but I'd really prefer an actual local piece of software than a web app.

The finance department in a previous job rather undramatically moved over to Google Sheets from Excel after seeing the befits of the collaboration/online environment.

They got some help by me for moving out the heavy stuff to SQL/BigQuery but that was also for the better. BigQuery and Sheets integrate very well these days so they could even use a Google sheet as a UI for the queries. Rows and columns, much better than any other web UI.

(Yes I believe you are being silly)

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

#46

Post by YVoyiatzis »

smallerdemon wrote: post #5

My spouse has a background in engineering and health sciences and is an Excel fan. I do IT support, and I kind of hate Excel, but I kind of love Apple's Numbers app.

I've exclusively used Numbers for as long as the app has been around. It meets all of my needs, including almost seamless Excel compatibility for imports and exports should the need arise.

The IT industry overall remains similarly entrenched. Enterprise software vendors insist on Windows dependency, staying tethered to outdated standards; upholding an inefficient status quo that serves only MSFT, developers, and technicians—not users nor progress.

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

#47

Post by zootboy »

MostlyStable wrote: post #34
fifilura wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Sheets worked fine for me. The UI is intuitive and stripped down. And it has much better networking/collaboration support compared to Microsoft that has it bolted on.

I may be being silly about this, and I probably should at least try how well google sheets works for me as a regular part of my workflow, but I'd really prefer an actual local piece of software than a web app.

There's nothing silly about wanting to avoid the sandcastle-built-on-quicksand world of web applications.

Sadly, the world of native apps, at least in the commercial space, seems to be drifting away from the tenants of stability and user control that the space used to exemplify. Excel 365 (or whatever the hell MS wants to call it) randomly auto-updates itself without warning or confirmation.

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

#48

Post by williamcotton »

MostlyStable wrote: post #28
terminalbraid wrote: post #22

I think of Excel as a neat example of a rare local minimum in the great programming space. I think R gets to something close like this too. You can technically accomplish about any programming task you want in it, albeit with poor ergonomics for anything sufficiently complicated, and a small but real push in that area of work will lead you to use a more accepted form of "programming". However, due to whatever environ…

R is mostly benefiting from network effects. Everyone in the life sciences uses it (I think economists mostly use Statista and engineers/physicists seem to use a lot of MatLab?), which means that all the things that they need get R libraries (and blog posts explaining how to do them, and publications validating their use, etc.). And the way that academic scientists work mean that most of the downsides of R don't actu…

I much prefer ggplot over other options!

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

#49

Post by gregates »

dartharva wrote: post #4
vlovich123 wrote: post #2

Quotes from people 30 and above which sounds about right. Is anyone these days growing up using Excel over Google Sheets? You used to have to pirate Excel and Google just gives it away for free with a free email account.

Excel leaves GSheets and all its alternatives in the dust in terms of performance and stability. I used to maintain MIS trackers in Google Sheets once, and when my company made the inevitable shift to MS Suite I saw an immediate improvement. FWIW I'm 25.

Well, not all its alternatives. There's one spreadsheet out there that has better performance than Excel: https://rowzero.io/home

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

#50

Post by nocman »

baq wrote: post #18
throwaway106382 wrote: post #16

I’ve only ever used Libre(open) Office Calc since I’ve never paid for or bothered to pirate office before. What can Excel do that Calc can’t? I’ve never done anything crazy heavy with it, but functions and stuff work fine for me I guess.

I’ve used Excel and Calc and the short answer is ‘everything’. Excel is faster, more reliable and has a much bigger community. Calc is ok if you want to work with small spreadsheets and don’t care about the occasional bug.

not the parent, but 'everything' is a mostly unhelpful answer.

A few important concrete examples would be much more interesting. In fairness, you did somewhat, but I would be interested in some more details.

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