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Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

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Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#51

Post by dotancohen »

overthemoon wrote: post #32
tanbog10 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And there aren’t good “data browsers” that have as low a learning curve." If someone is trained to the point of working on genetic data at this level, should they not also have been trained to a reasonable level in domain appropriate software and tools?

I'm continually shocked at how technically incompetent academics can be. Otherwise brilliant people with the most batshit technical workflows I've ever seen.

Like everybody else, they take the path of least resistance. Of course, when that path is Excel they're in for a lot of resistance later (like needing to rename genes), but at first it feels smooth.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#52

Post by jmchuster »

hamasho wrote: post #31
jmchuster wrote: post #7

Similarly, if your last name is "Null", sometimes it's just easier to just change your last name.

For reference [0]. It should be tough to have such a name. The most important systems like tax/insurance/airline booking are often the most unkind systems. If you're not familiar with computers, it's almost impossible to imagine the potential cause of problems is your name. [0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160325-the-names-that-b... > These unlucky people have names that break computers

I had a PM who would get deleted out of the company directory every 6 months. She resolved the issue by getting married.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#53

Post by chipsa »

Part of the problem, highlighted in the article: Users don't set the data type of the column off of "General". So it tries to figure out the data type on entry. Setting the column to use a specific type ("Text"), keeps it from trying to use heuristics to figure out that something is a date.

Something more recent is the introduction into Excel of Power Query, which lets you import a CSV and apply arbitrary transformations (such as applying a type), before it hits the workbook, so if you need to pull in a CSV, you can do so, and it will always be imported the same way.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#54

Post by zokier »

nicoburns wrote: post #18
nulbyte wrote: post #16

> Microsoft Excel may be fleeting, but human genes will be around for as long as we are. It’s best to give them names that work. This is the crux of the issue. Yes, Excel could do better with support for CSV. (OpenOffice and LibreOffice habdle this better, for example.) But no, genetics is not some niche use-case for this better support. It's just one example of many. I do analytics of another sort for a bank, and we…

I really wish there was a better interchange format for tabular data. Criteria: - Plain text file - Supports formatting, cell types, etc - Does not support full spreadsheet features like formulas

Parquet is not plain text (but that is an oxymoron anyways), but otherwise afaik it is pretty solid data interchange format supported by a number of tools already. It doesn't have native formatting system, but it does allow arbitrary key-value metadata on columns so surely something could be cooked up with that.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#55

Post by ElectricalUnion »

mort96 wrote: post #49
dotancohen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, keep adding to the "tons of other GUI features" list. I'm just started on a Python/Qt/Sqlite project for spreadsheet-like functionality backed by a strongly-typed database. The things that you mention are perfect features. I'd love to know more.

I'm curious, how do you achieve a strongly-typed database with sqlite? sqlite's lack of verifying that your data fits in your defined schema is by far my biggest problem with sqlite.

check (typeof(column) = 'integer')

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#56

Post by dotancohen »

jraph wrote: post #45
dotancohen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that databases do not include a GUI for data viewing. Let's say that I have PyCharm open right now, I'm importing Qt and Sqlite. How would you like your GUI to function? Seriously, write for me a detailed spec and a detailed workflow, and I'll get to work on it already. My Gmail username is the same as my HN username if you'd prefer to collaborate offline. This invite goes for anybody else who [ab]us…

SQLiteBrowser is written in Qt and is a GUI for SQLite. That's exactly what came in mind when I read parent's post. https://sqlitebrowser.org/

That was my first thought, too. But I think that there is demand for a tool that feels like a spreadsheet, backed by SQLite.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#57

Post by andi999 »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #50
jasode wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The real problem is of course using Excel to maintain data. That's not what it's for. That's what databases are for. Excel is for complex calculations over rows and columns. I use MS Excel extensively and create new .xlsx files every week even though I know databases like SQLite, MySQL, and did consulting for Oracle RDBMS. The problem is that databases do not include a GUI for data viewing . And even though I also k…

You are not supposed to have a GUI view when you have 100K+ entries. Excel misguides people to think that database management is easy. The reality is it is not possible to have a GUI view of middle-large databases with millions of entries because it is computationally impossible

Why shd that be computationally impossible?

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#58

Post by ElectricalUnion »

nicoburns wrote: post #33
olau wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UTF-8 CSV with a few HTML tags for formatting? You could call it CHU. Now you just need to make Excel accept it.

I'd like it to have support for things like "this is a cell", where format is something like text, numeric, date, currency. I'm not sure how you'd specify that in HTML.

> text, numeric, date

I think it's already defined?

, ,

> currency

You probably need to use the microdata format https://schema.org/Offer

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#59

Post by prepend »

tanbog10 wrote: post #28
prepend wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s not really a better tool that I’ve found. Excel is ubiquitous and pretty easy to use. And there aren’t good “data browsers” that have as low a learning curve. I’ve been especially looking for a JSON browser/editor since excel doesn’t do that well and I’m unsuccessful trying to explain how to use basic text editors to people who can’t do basic functions like open files that aren’t associated with a program.

"And there aren’t good “data browsers” that have as low a learning curve." If someone is trained to the point of working on genetic data at this level, should they not also have been trained to a reasonable level in domain appropriate software and tools?

I consider myself pretty trained and still use Excel for “eyeballing” datasets of up to a million records.

There’s many times where I don’t want to do anything more than open, sort, filter, and never see the file again. And I’d like something better than Excel, but haven’t found it.

Maybe 70% the time, vi or BBEdit or shell commands work but otherwise excel.

For anything of significance, I use Python notebooks or dedicated data environment.

If there was a better tool, I think people would train. But there’s not, that I’m aware of, so Excel sticks around.

Re: Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#60

Post by prepend »

overthemoon wrote: post #32
tanbog10 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And there aren’t good “data browsers” that have as low a learning curve." If someone is trained to the point of working on genetic data at this level, should they not also have been trained to a reasonable level in domain appropriate software and tools?

I'm continually shocked at how technically incompetent academics can be. Otherwise brilliant people with the most batshit technical workflows I've ever seen.

People are very inventive to get their job done.

I’ve done some travel to Africa and am amazed at the ingenuity/batshit workflows that exist to get work done and live life.

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