8 ms·
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 sear
by geori 11y ago
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.
- someone7x 11y agoI've known a handful of people that have become full-time programmers after achieving proficiency in Excel. It's a product that many people enjoy using and mastering.
- adrianN 11y agoDoing complex modelling in Excel is not a good idea. There is no way to do proper software engineering, so bugs are common and hard to find. For examples, see http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm
- CPLX 11y agoA complex model in Excel is software engineering. The degree to which it is "proper" of course, is situational.
- crispyambulance 11y agoSo? Many great projects start out as excel spreadsheets: someone has a problem, solves it with excel, then goes on to solve other problems with that spreadsheet. People use it and become dependent on it, but over time the thing becomes intractable. At that point in time, the functionality of the spreadsheet gets implemented by actual developers into some "engineered application." If you are suggesting to NOT start with excel, then propose another solution-- but good luck getting anyone to use it. The key thing is, no one wants to engage "software engineers $$$" to solve a problem that lands on their desk which they handle by themselves.
- osullivj 11y agoAnd once some devs turn it into an "engineered application" the change cycle jumps from minutes or hours to days, weeks or even months.
- TheLogothete 11y agoShh! Your logic and practical experience is not welcomed. We like to scream with self-righteousness from our software engineering high horses here. Software engineers know best and everybody else is wrong because he doesn't know any better, since he has a limited perspective.
- cm2187 11y agoor years. I often have the fantasy to write "Powered by COBOL" below the logo of my company.
- eterm 11y agoExcept "proper software engineering" would mean whatever is being built simply never gets built. In many cases it's better to get somewhere quickly with excel then work out if "proper software engineering" is required than never get off the ground because engineering something is too difficult. Think of excel like lego. Someone can quickly build something out of lego. Now if someone tried to build a cathedral from lego, you might suggest that they find an architect and do some proper house building, but without lego they would never have tried. And chances are they're not building a cathedral.
- elcapitan 11y agoThere's actually an interesting gap between 'building some model in Excel' and 'moving on into a programming model where code and data are separated'. Like generating model code in some normal programming language from a spreadsheet.
- eterm 11y agoDoes VBA fill that gap? I once worked on a system where one of the more important parts of the business was a system of VBA modules in an access file. One of my more important contributions as a fresh graduate entering the workplace was to get people to copy the file from the network share to a local drive before running. Run-times went from "leave overnight" to ~15 minutes.
- tamana 11y agoRight, but why VBA? Because VBA is the only language with first class support in Excel, not because VBA is good at all. If not fon its "privilege", you'd use something like Python or JavaScript (yah it sucks, but not as bad a VB) or a purpose-built sane language, not something Joel Spolsky dashed off a spec for one Tuesday afternoon.
- adrianN 11y agoJust 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".
- cm2187 11y agoThe proper software equivalent is https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search-results?query=&search_type=last3years&cves=on https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search-results?query=&sea...
- colanderman 11y agoWord certainly is, at least on OS X. Within an hour of my first time using it in a decade last week, I caused it to beachball for five minutes straight by clicking a single button (select all text of a given style). It then took me over an hour to figure out why my TOC entries had no spacing between their numbers and titles (hint: it wasn't the spacing setting), and another hour to figure out why, after I "fixed" the spacing issue, why my chapter numbering was all messed up (the "solution" was to reformat each chapter heading with the same format it already had). It has terrible default orphan/widow control, and editing anything graphical is a royal pain in the ass: the slightest wrong touch can throw your diagram into disarray. Those that "know" how to use it I've noticed seem to have near-infinite patience and knowledge of where all of Word's "land mines" are and how to avoid them. People use it because it bundles in every obscure feature under the sun, so it's effectively the lowest common denominator when it comes to meeting an organizations' needs. And for those who already know how to use it, I suspect the sunk cost fallacy keeps them there.
- FussyZeus 11y agoIn defense of Word: The vast majority of people don't realize just how massive Word is in terms of it's feature set and it's complexity, Word is a fully furnished publishing program and most people treat it like a rich text editor. I still have and use it irregularly for a few things, but if you just need to edit text with formatting, use TextEdit. Using Word to type up a memo is like using a jet engine to cook a TV dinner.
- marcosdumay 11y agoIt may be incredibly powerful (for what use case?) and everything. But it's an incredibly bad rich text editor. Word can't keep a list straight.
- FussyZeus 11y agoThat's akin to saying "this screwdriver sucks as a hammer." You're using it wrong.
- jrcii 11y agoExcel is not perfect but it is best in class. I've built and maintained a time-series statistics research database for one of the largest trade associations in the world for over 10 years which heavily integrates with Excel. In so doing I've become intimately familiar with its quarks and shortcomings but ultimately it always provides a path to accomplish your goals, including high-performance automation https://msdn.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/office/bb687829.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/office/bb687829.asp...
- psykovsky 11y agoyou seem to be talking about php...
- CompelTechnic 11y agoAs a mechanical engineer, excel has been a wonderful tool. Engineers in our department get to have a smooth transition into programming competency in VBA, which has found itself extremely useful in many mechanical engineering analyses. My coworkers are given the ability to crawl (simple equations in spreadsheets) then walk (user-defined functions) then run (automatic iterative solutions in UDF's, applying test data to create UDF models of machine performance). Not something a lot of mechanical folks would ever find themselves doing unless an already well-used tool has a good progression toward more complex and demanding use cases.
- thedevil 11y agoIn 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).
- CyberDildonics 11y agoWhat makes you say that?
- psykovsky 11y agohe never used openoffice or libreoffice...
- thedevil 11y agoIt was very well made. It's easy to use and yet but also has great features and shortcuts for power users. There's lots of genius little features not available elsewhere, like grouping columns or formulas over columns or rows (e.g. sum(A:A)). I often abused it with 50mb spreadsheets (a bad practice fyi) and it could often take it. The version I used rarely crashed. For most software I use, I see lots of things that need improvement. With Excel, I can only think of a few. (If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, please add matchifs, it's desperately needed).
- cm2187 11y agoLet's start a list: Opening a csv triggers a full recalc even if your calcs are on manual. That's absurd given that csv files by definition have no formulas Come on Microsoft. 18 years without updating the scripting abilities. Can't we have a .net version of VBA?? And NO JAVASCRIPT. The fx button still opens a tiny old non resizable windows with a broken search feature, which is impractical if you have hundreds of UDF. High levels of nesting in the UI making it really slow to repeat certain actions (try drawing something). I still miss Excel 2003's customizable UI. They could provide at least a function to pull end of day FX rates. Integration with powerpoint pretty much non existant. A huge amount of users prepare decks based on a model in Excel. The process to link them is unstable / stone age. We should be able to transform a sheet into an excel formula, so that a non programmer can apply a complex logic to lots of data without a script. Xlsm files get corrupted regularly when excel is running low on memory. Adopt apple's idea of a sheet being a canvas on which you can drag tables or charts instead of having this antique model of a single grid which becomes annoying as soon as you have two tables on the same tab. I am sure I can pull more if popular demand!
- fumar 11y agoMicrosoft 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 company. If I create a unique data set in R, but would like to share it to everyone and have them play - its not going to spread very far. If I do the same in Excel, everyone can take a look and manipulate the data. I like to think of Office is a practical solution for most business with a wide range of users who are "generalists."
- someguydave 11y ago> Office is great because users in most business settings can quickly pick up any of its applications My experience is that 'users in business settings' absolutely refuse to consider any alternatives, mainly because of two 'fear factors': 1.) "Everyone else in my industry uses Microsoft Office products so I must as well" 2.) (Usually unstated explicitly) "Learning an alternative is going to cost me time and money and personal effort" Sure, Excel can be a useful spreadsheet tool, but Word is a clumsy and difficult publishing tool. Many alternatives from LaTeX to LibreOffice to InDesign tend to be more portable and reliable but require the user to assume a degree of risk for learning something new and different. That seems to be enough to keep the majority of users away.
- mikestew 11y agoAbsolutely; no one uses Office because they can "quickly pick up any of its applications". People use Office because they already "picked up" its applications. LibreOffice? Lemmee see here, I'm a bookkeeper/lab research assistant/factory supervisor that just wants to get my shit done and go home. There's this FOSS thing that mostly works but sometimes doesn't, or this Microsoft thing that I already know how to use and "works" perfectly (because it for sure can read its own format), and I don't give two poops about "Freedom!". I'm going to send a requisition to the boss for another Excel license. For a lot of people, they don't want to learn alternatives ('cuz that's on my time, since they boss ain't training me), and the cost of the license isn't coming out of their pocket. Of course they use Office. That's not an unreasonable choice.
- qihqi 11y agoThe shittiest aspect of Office is the price.
- scholia 11y agoLet's say someone who earns $50,000 a year uses Office for 5 hours a day while making a living. It's also a purchased copy so it lasts at least 6 years. What's that worth? How does it compare with the cost of, say, one Starbucks a day? If you employ somebody on that salary for 6 years (so add extra employment costs including taxes, insurance, office space and perks), what percentage do you save by not paying Office's shitty price?
- tamana 11y agoVim, for example, makes me 10$/yr at least, but doesn't cost anywhere near that. It's better prices than Office.
- scholia 11y agoSure, but it's not a replacement for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook or any of the other Office programs. The real question is, if vim cost $100, would you pay or would you use a product you didn't like as much, that wasn't as efficient, or as productive? How much would you pay for a Supervim that earned you an extra $5k/yr?
- rayiner 11y agoGod forbid someone exchange money for software instead of offering it for free and making money through ulterior motives.
- riquito 11y ago> There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly ... It IS good, for sure, but let's not forget about everything done by Microsoft to ensure that nobody else could edit reliably their files while locking the world with .doc, .ppt, .xls. The competitors never stood a chance.
- sandworm101 11y agoToo bad Excel isn't really a standalone product. Office and windows are necessary dependencies. Given that, it is a shitty product. If they broke it out, allowed me to run it on an OS I actually want to use, away from MS's gremlins, then I certainly would buy/install/use. But as of today it comes with far too much baggage.
- rchaud 11y agoIt has been available on Mac OS since 1989 and there is a browser-based version that is freely usable with a Microsoft account. I think you should check your facts.
- sandworm101 11y agoYes. Neither is the Linux-compatable version I need/want. I use spreadsheets for sensitive information. Something reliant on browsers, with all their headaches, doesn't fit my security model nor that of my clients.
- npizzolato 11y agoThat's not what you were complaining about earlier. Shifting the goalposts is always fun.
- Kiro 11y agoYeah, the MS Office comment ruined an otherwise good article.
- collyw 11y agoIts a shitty database, and a shitty data entry solution, which is what it was used for in my last workplace. But people know how to use it and will use it for all sorts of things that its not particularly good for.