61–70 of 123 posts
It's the user's decision that's usually wrong. Not the framework in which the solution is built.
For example, at Budibase [1], we've found a high percentage of our use cases are companies upgrading their in-house spreadsheets to applications due to several reasons: Volume of data Lack of auditing Lack of control Accessibility
Excel thrived in banks, not because traders used it, but because IT/Quant people used it. It's so much more straightforward to build a UI in Excel than with React. Just type things in cells, then wire them with simple VBA buttons. Of course there are things you can't do, but for the purposes of a bank, it's very rare that you find one.
So if I am a quant, I don't need to go to the frontend guy, trying to explain to him what a "vega" is and why I would want to multiply by notional/vol to change the units. This is a huuuuge time saver. And you can change your UI anytime. Just open the file, add a column, click save and it's done.
At some point, banks knew that fat-finger-mistakes could cost them fortunes, and the lack of auditing was terrible. But they had to force traders to switch off their sheets by threatening them with internal fines (we'll charge you $2m for running things with Excel). So traders complied, but then they got into years-long projects, to create shitty shitty web apps, that couldn't do half of what Excel had built-in. Every change would need to go through an approval process, and it's unclear whether these systems had less bugs than spreadsheet did.
The first thing they wanted when the project was done? "Give me a button to export to Excel".
For the shameless plug part, I am building a tool to try and bridge code and spreadsheet (https://www.jigdev.com). Lmk if you have comments/suggestions.
One aspect that is rarely talked about is that Excel is really good for developers who know about data/stats/business/databases but don't know about frontend app development. Excel thrived in banks, not because traders used it, but because IT/Quant people used it. It's so much more straightforward to build a UI in Excel than with React. Just type things in cells, then wire them with simple VBA buttons. Of course ther…
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…
Be careful what you wish for - I think you might have just reinvented MS Access.
We had been using Excel for org charts like most places. We wanted to add grouping, metadata, and neatly be able to extend/add information with or without constraints. This was much before I knew anything database related, and Access seemed to be more powerful than Excel. Having generated forms to fit the data model was much more user friendly and a lot less error prone than adding a new row to an Excel sheet.
People criticize Access for being a dumb database or a Excel with too much heavy lifting. It occupies a specific space as a DB on rails.
One aspect that is rarely talked about is that Excel is really good for developers who know about data/stats/business/databases but don't know about frontend app development. Excel thrived in banks, not because traders used it, but because IT/Quant people used it. It's so much more straightforward to build a UI in Excel than with React. Just type things in cells, then wire them with simple VBA buttons. Of course ther…
Any plans on open sourcing? I'm tired of apps changing until my use cases are not covered anymore, so I'd like to future-proof my usage of tools, and open source/free software seems to be the only way to make that work in practice.
Read "this is not a passion project, this is something I would like to make a living of."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tables are probably the most overlooked feature of Excel. Why use tables? * Each column is uniquely named - no more wondering if you are referencing the right cell, no more thinking about "to $ or not to $" * The table's rows and columns are reliably discovered by pivot tables - no more wondering if the entire dataset is referenced by the pivot * New columns that are formulas are automatically applied to every row *…
Most people have no clue these features exist, or that Excel even has advanced data modeling that supports all sorts of goodies including strict types and joins/merges/appends. It's not as accessible as just basic sheets, but I've had no problem crunching millions of rows of data in Excel with sub-second response times.
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.
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…
Tables are probably the most overlooked feature of Excel. Why use tables? * Each column is uniquely named - no more wondering if you are referencing the right cell, no more thinking about "to $ or not to $" * The table's rows and columns are reliably discovered by pivot tables - no more wondering if the entire dataset is referenced by the pivot * New columns that are formulas are automatically applied to every row *…
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…
Spreadsheets are broken. It's easy to be at error due to calculation issues, which you'll only find out when manually going over it. It's a calculator that can't properly calculate. Many business have made huge mistakes due to it.
Never ever use it for financial calculations.