51–60 of 123 posts
Dang, what software engineers hate spreadsheets? I've never worked anywhere that didn't use them for project planning and other such stuff.
I agree with a lot of the points raised here. I think many of the problems with spreadsheets are due to the software rather than the users. As mentioned in the article, its hard to slowly iterate from a small manageable spreadsheet to an larger software solution. For example, Excel would be a lot more usable and maintainable for me if there was a way to make a special "data sheet" in which data types are forced to be…
I think Airtable is starting to get us there, but it's a long way to go. Something that combined Airtable, excel, and maybe a more userfriendly (and more restricted) version of darklang for defining formulae could be really slick.
It's the interface: a grid of editable cells is incredibly easy to use and as almost as information-dense as possible. It's interesting to see non-excel/google sheets products use the same interface to good effect. Examples don't come to mind but I'm sure there are some.
I want to like LibreOffice Calc but it's just too slow.
It's the interface: a grid of editable cells is incredibly easy to use and as almost as information-dense as possible. It's interesting to see non-excel/google sheets products use the same interface to good effect. Examples don't come to mind but I'm sure there are some.
This is a valid point! Anyone who has built an admin dashboard knows that the UX of being able to edit any field in any row on an Excel is hard to replicate without additional edit buttons and dialogs popping up.
I agree with a lot of the points raised here. I think many of the problems with spreadsheets are due to the software rather than the users. As mentioned in the article, its hard to slowly iterate from a small manageable spreadsheet to an larger software solution. For example, Excel would be a lot more usable and maintainable for me if there was a way to make a special "data sheet" in which data types are forced to be…
You can already do both of those in Excel:
- data types: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/apply-data-valida... (though you'd also need to lock the spreadsheet as otherwise someone could remove the validation on the cells)
- column naming: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/give-name-columns-excel-7344... (you can name individual cells and ranges too. Which means you can actually start to write formulas that look more like C with name variables, very loosely speaking of course)
There's a surprising amount of hidden functionally in Excel. Personally I think that while ribbon bar might have made core features a lot easier for some, it's made a lot of the more advanced tools harder to discover.
We need a spreadsheet format that's more conducive to the professional programmer workflow. Parsing them is actually very complex. You just have to hope your library can handle everything in excel. If you're a cli native I'm not really sure what you do. Spreadsheets don't play very will with source control. If the underlying format was text and every cell and formula was on a new line it would work out ok. As it is n…
More than that it's outright stupid. Look at what the UK tried to do their contact tracing program through an excel file. They ran in to problems at 80,000 entries because excel has limits and the whole thing fell apart during the peak of a pandemic. Spreadsheets are not Databases so don't use them as such -- thus "spreadsheets everywhere" isn't a good principal. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988 Author se…
Suddenly out of the blue it doesn't work anymore. It's fine given you stay within scope and don't rely too much on it.
I agree with a lot of the points raised here. I think many of the problems with spreadsheets are due to the software rather than the users. As mentioned in the article, its hard to slowly iterate from a small manageable spreadsheet to an larger software solution. For example, Excel would be a lot more usable and maintainable for me if there was a way to make a special "data sheet" in which data types are forced to be…
I've had similar thoughts in the past. Databases are very machine-friendly, but too static and inflexible to match the usability of spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are extremely user-friendly, but too inconsistent and unconstrained to be efficient for programmatic access. It seems like there should be a way to combine the two. Maybe a minimal set of optional constraints (like a separation between data and code) like you p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spreadsheet users are programmers. Shouldn't be a war. But, the problem with spreadsheets is that they are an engine of shoddy programming. I don't think it's fundamental. All currently existing spreadsheet implementations hide their functions and make review difficult. If we had spreadsheets that somehow exposed the relations between the cells and made them easier to inspect, ideally minimizing selective interaction…
I agree with the your statements. Would add that it is important to understand most developers of spreadsheets have never taken a programming class and do not fully understand many of the issues discussed in this thread. Also, there is little motivation to the spreadsheet user to change. In the examples given by the author, the original creator of the spreadsheet is long gone by the time the problems surface.
Do any of the spreadsheet lovers here use anything other than Excel? I want to like LibreOffice Calc but it's just too slow.