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Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

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Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#71

Post by phonon »

nanny wrote: post #62
thedevil wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a past life, I made (very expensive) spreadsheets for a living. And though I don't like most Microsoft products, I'm pretty sure that Excel was built by God himself (or at least He was the lead dev or the PM).

Are you serious? Excel is complete and utter trash. Check out some "quirks" from the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Quirks . Some of the worst ones: * Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display an error * Excel includes January 0, 1900 and February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3, and wa…

>In addition, it is completely useless for handling any type of delimited file. By default it supports csv. If you want to view a pipe-delimited file, you have to dig into the language settings of Windows, change the default delimiter, and open the file. Then, you cannot edit comma-separated files without changing it back first. So, there's no way to convert one to the other. Same problem with tab delimiters.

Totally wrong, Excel has the ability to import using Data -> From Text that opens a wizard that will step you through opening any type of delimited file, formatting columns, header rows, etc.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#72

Post by scholia »

scruple wrote: post #64
soylentcola wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow comment discarder here. You wouldn't guess by some of the long-winded replies I've made across various sites but that's a big part of it I think. I often write comments as if I'm having a conversation in my head so there's not a clear structure like you'd find in an essay or "proper" written piece. Then I start thinking of all the ways someone could miss the point and end up rambling. See? Almost doing it now.

Yeah. I find that I usually don't submit my comments (despite writing them out and over-editing them, typically in a JOURNAL.TXT style file, as well) because I start thinking about how they'll be perceived or interpreted, how they'll be judged. Which is also essentially why I've been 'shy' my entire life around strangers. That and I genuinely feel like 90% of the time I'm not adding much substance to the topics (whic…

As Clive James once said, "No amount of careful writing can overcome careless reading" ;-)

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#73

Post by renlo »

fumar wrote: post #34
geori wrote: post #2

MS Office (specifically Excel) is not a shitty product. There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly with finance types Wall Street than Google does with search. Power users can quickly build powerful financial models with it.

Microsoft Office (by the way 2016 is a pretty solid software suite) is not thriving because of institutional knowledge. Office is great because users in most business settings can quickly pick up any of its applications (learn how to use it) and apply the same learnings to the rest of the suite, personal knowledge with a small learning curve. Also, tools like Excel are malleable and useable for most users in a compan…

Your argument is that Microsoft Office is not thriving because of institutional knowledge, then you proceed to prove that it is institutional knowledge that makes it a valuable tool.

If your arguments are: 1) Most users can pick it up easily due to familiarity. 2) Excel is a general tool usable by many disparate groups in the organization. 3) Excel is the lingua franca of manipulating data within the organization.

Then it seems to me that these would fall under the category of 'institutional knowledge', and you are in effect arguing that it is thriving because of institutional knowledge.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#74

Post by nanny »

maratd wrote: post #70
nanny wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Excel is complete and utter trash. Check out some "quirks" from the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Quirks . Some of the worst ones: * Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display an error * Excel includes January 0, 1900 and February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3, and wa…

The purpose of software isn't to be correct or even predictable . It's to satisfy the needs of the user. The user in this case, isn't you. It's corporate clients who make decisions for tens of thousands of employees. They have various needs, however esoteric and strange. I promise you that all of the behavior you cited was implemented at the request of a client. Ideally Microsoft should craft custom versions for spec…

I use Excel nearly every day at work. How am I not the user? My company has needs too, one of which is correctly editing spreadsheets and delimited files. Excel is insufficient for this.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#75

Post by nanny »

phonon wrote: post #71
nanny wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Excel is complete and utter trash. Check out some "quirks" from the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Quirks . Some of the worst ones: * Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display an error * Excel includes January 0, 1900 and February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3, and wa…

>In addition, it is completely useless for handling any type of delimited file. By default it supports csv. If you want to view a pipe-delimited file, you have to dig into the language settings of Windows, change the default delimiter, and open the file. Then, you cannot edit comma-separated files without changing it back first. So, there's no way to convert one to the other. Same problem with tab delimiters. Totally…

That doesn't help you edit the file, though. It only helps you convert it to an Excel file. You still can't save as anything other than comma-separated without changing the language settings.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#76

Post by nanny »

thedevil wrote: post #67
nanny wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Excel is complete and utter trash. Check out some "quirks" from the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Quirks . Some of the worst ones: * Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display an error * Excel includes January 0, 1900 and February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3, and wa…

For the 14 years during which I used excel daily, the first 4 items you listed didn't affect me and the last two never mattered. I used text-to-columns to very nicely parse pipe-delimited files. The leading zeros issue I bumped into several times and was a minor irritation to fix.

>I used text-to-columns to very nicely parse pipe-delimited files.

Sure, but you still can't edit it and save it without losing data. I use Excel nearly every day as well, and I get more and more frustrated the more I use it. My coworkers hate it as well. Just because you haven't personally experienced any problems doesn't mean they don't exist.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#77

Post by soylentcola »

mentos wrote: post #14

Imagine facebook is a spherical magnet with ten thousand small lead balls clung to it. If you're trying to create a better magnet it can't just be the same as facebook's. Putting the same magnet near facebook's will only collect a small handful of peripheral users. If you want to capture the critical mass you have to energize a magnet with an attractive force so great that it will begin to vibrate users close to the…

Pretty good analogy but magnetic fields don't discriminate whereas one enduring reason for Facebook's success is that a large portion of that critical mass is particularly adverse to change.

I guess if you wanted to get ridiculous with the analogy, you could make the "balls" of different materials, some of which are very strongly attracted to the magnet and others which take a lot less force to pull away.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#78

Post by collyw »

iofj wrote: post #55
adrianN wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like I wouldn't want to live in a house built from LEGO, I'm somewhat wary of Excel models as the basis for investment strategies in major banks. The problem with the quick and hacky solution is that it's never replaced, because that would cost money, and the current solution "looks like it works".

However the excel solution has a lot of things going for it : 1) applications/reports built by the people designing and understanding the underlying needs and inner workings of whatever they're offering. Whilst very good programmers can match this (given enough - that's a lot - time), average programmers won't even try. 2) excel sheets require nowhere near the manpower required for your alternative. That factors into…

"excel sheets require nowhere near the manpower required for your alternative. That factors into a cost-benefit analysis that may not favor real development."

Not to build, but to maintain and constantly clean up the errors by using the wrong tool for the job. I know form experience having wasted countless hours because my organisation insisted on using it as a tool to upload data to our database, and using it as the database before that.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#79

Post by nhebb »

blcArmadillo wrote: post #36

Perhaps a litte off topic but does anyone here hate open table, if so can you share why? I've always found making a reservation a very plesant experience. To see all the availble times and make a reservation only takes a couple clicks.

From the article:

"While I am happy to share data with those that request it, I will summarize by saying that most restaurant customers that use OpenTable abhor it (for a few different reasons)."

His company, TableHero, is a competitor, so "most" may be an exaggeration. He's probably identified a few weaknesses in Open Table to capitalize on.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#80

Post by tamana »

maratd wrote: post #70
nanny wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Excel is complete and utter trash. Check out some "quirks" from the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Quirks . Some of the worst ones: * Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display an error * Excel includes January 0, 1900 and February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3, and wa…

The purpose of software isn't to be correct or even predictable . It's to satisfy the needs of the user. The user in this case, isn't you. It's corporate clients who make decisions for tens of thousands of employees. They have various needs, however esoteric and strange. I promise you that all of the behavior you cited was implemented at the request of a client. Ideally Microsoft should craft custom versions for spec…

When I am doing multi million dollar financial models, I like correct and predictable.
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