Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft is making Excel’s formulas easier

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 141 posts

Re: Microsoft is making Excel’s formulas easier

#91

Post by KMag »

twobitshifter wrote: post #90
KMag wrote: post #86

Quick shout out to Ellx[0] (I presume, Excel pronounced backwards), which I discovered on HN a couple of years ago when discussing where I'd like to see spreadsheets evolve. It's basically functional reactive spreadsheets in JavaScript, with a storage format that's friendly toward code review, source control, diffs, etc. It automatically performs function lifting, so functions over single values become time-varying f…

Seems like something I’d really like, but when I went looking at the demos and docs it was spitting lots of errors on Safari Example: https://ellx.io/ellx-hub/lib

Not my project, but I'll ping it over to Dmitry.

One thing is that it's possible that Ellx uses exceptions to detect time series and lift regular functions into time series functions. I'm not sure the implementation details. There are all kinds of ways exceptions can be abused to implement near-magic. (I believe there's a library that uses exceptions in OCaml to implement coroutines.) I wouldn't be surprised if Ellx used some try-catch near-magic that doesn't quite work on Safari.

Re: Microsoft is making Excel’s formulas easier

#92

Post by rahimnathwani »

EMM_386 wrote: post #89
spockz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this exactly what Microsoft access was invented for? I’ve seen technical but non-cs people built magical things in forms by (or views). And when access got the ability to talk to MSSQL it really blew up. The quintessential low-code environment. I wonder why it never caught on.

I was hired a couple decades ago to replace a Microsoft Access system that was written by a non-software engineer and was running an entire company with around 50 users with all sorts of complex forms. It got a little too big and I rewrote it as a C# desktop application talking to a SQL Server, but it was impressive what this person was able to create with no real programming knowledge and just Microsoft Access.

I like this comment.

A lot of comments on HN display disrespect for people using tools like Excel and Access instead of 'doing things properly'.

You acknowledge that the person who built what you replaced was working under constraints and created a system that ran a 50-person company.

Re: Microsoft is making Excel’s formulas easier

#93

Post by rahimnathwani »

shockeychap wrote: post #81

My #1 wish for Excel is named aliases in a formula so that I don't end up with repetitive incomprehensible formulas that are impossible to follow because I'm using the same VLOOKUP in three different places for a calculation. My #2 wish is a way for it to automatically break down and indent nested function calls for readability. The color coded brackets help, but only a little.

For #1 you mean like LET?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/let-function-3484...

Re: Microsoft is making Excel’s formulas easier

#95

Post by NotACop182 »

capableweb wrote: post #49
tanin wrote: post #46

Well, shameless plug. https://superintendent.app (paid with free trial) enables you to load a bunch of CSVs and write SQL on those CSV files. It's a much faster to work with if you know SQL well. It can also handle millions of rows easily (e.g. Loading 1GB CSV file takes 10s on Macbook Pro). Excel can't load a CSV larger than 1M rows. I initially built it because I had to identify the mismatched transactions between…

You are eventually gonna have to write comments about other things than just plugging your own projects, especially when they are just barely on topic.

He is shameless. I second this comment.

Re: Microsoft is making Excel’s formulas easier

#96

Post by extr »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #61
SoftTalker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is because businesspeople like to fiddle with formulas, graphs, and filters untill they isolate (i.e. cherry-pick) the subset of data that [makes them look good | supports their agendas]. They don't want canned reports. Excel makes this easy because they already know how to do those things in Excel.

People get really mad when you call this p-hacking, btw. I used to try and make this point to ”analysts” that I worked with, that science involves coming up with a hypothesis and then looking at the data. The response I got often enough that I’m sure it’s being taught somewhere was that you “need to let the data tell it’s own story”. Turns out lots of people have decided what the conclusion is and are taking that con…

I think a lot of times unless you are operating at hyperscale and bps matter, most business data analysis is more art than science. Ex, if you have Of course you want to be intellectually honest about it, and I agree that cherry-picking the "right" data can be a big problem in the wrong kind of organization. I remember one time a Jr analyst I managed was asked by the CEO to create a certain chart. I was not looped in. The CEO then used that chart to convince himself and many others on the executive team to make a huge product change that ended up being a complete disaster.

Re: Microsoft is making Excel’s formulas easier

#97

Post by layer8 »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #5
function_seven wrote: post #2

My current #1 wish for Excel formula entry: Please let me use [Tab] and [Enter] in the formula bar without trying to commit the change! I like to format my formulas with multiple lines and indentation, but to do that I have to hold down [Alt] and mash the spacebar like a caveman. I am happy with the new features I've been seeing. LAMBDA() and the new TEXT functions are nifty.

And [Home] without jumping to select column A, and the arrow keys should work consistently instead of sometimes moving the cursor and sometimes inserting a cell selection.

Arrow keys: That’s actually consistent, F2 toggles the two modes (Enter and Edit), and the current mode is indicated in the status bar. See for example https://www.omnisecu.com/excel/worksheet/excel-cell-modes-re.... It’s a bit like Vim modes.

Re: Microsoft is making Excel’s formulas easier

#98

Post by auxym »

ayemojay wrote: post #23
unsupp0rted wrote: post #13

Recently I started building Excel addons with custom formulas (e.g. =company.inventory(upc, WAREHOUSE), which call an api. This has blown the minds of non-tech folks among my clients. They equate this to magic. I was forced into doing this because after a year of digging to find out what reporting they wanted in the dashboard (“oh a thousand things… where’s the Excel spreadsheet export button?”), I gave up and now de…

What is your language of choice for building custom formula? Python + xlwings: most successful (relatively speaking) to build custom finance functions in my line of work. Downside is the slowness and deploying on other computers. Rust + xladd: really enjoyed this but feels immature still. Better performance than python and easier to distribute as single dll. VBA: options above make this almost obsolete, however can’t…

You can use C# or F# using excel-DNA. I've played with excel add-ons (xll files) in F# in the past, pretty neat.

Re: Microsoft is making Excel’s formulas easier

#99

Post by dan-robertson »

spockz wrote: post #63
unsupp0rted wrote: post #13

Recently I started building Excel addons with custom formulas (e.g. =company.inventory(upc, WAREHOUSE), which call an api. This has blown the minds of non-tech folks among my clients. They equate this to magic. I was forced into doing this because after a year of digging to find out what reporting they wanted in the dashboard (“oh a thousand things… where’s the Excel spreadsheet export button?”), I gave up and now de…

Isn’t this exactly what Microsoft access was invented for? I’ve seen technical but non-cs people built magical things in forms by (or views). And when access got the ability to talk to MSSQL it really blew up. The quintessential low-code environment. I wonder why it never caught on.

Access is a bunch less flexible than excel. You need to plan how to query data more carefully and as soon as you want to do something weird, you basically need to dump your query result into excel anyway.
Post reply on HN