4 ms·

I'll just quote Soustrup here: "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses." In particular you see the sprea

by krapht 10y ago

I'll just quote Soustrup here: "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses." In particular you see the spreadsheet GUI as a downfall, but I think it is a great enabler that has allowed millions of non-programmers to create useful programs.

cm2187 10y ago
In fact a lot could be said of the millions of ways to shoot oneself in the foot with programming languages. Excel being visual (the formula is evaluated/tested immediatly after being entered), I'd argue a diligent user will make less mistakes with Excel than while coding.
- ethan_g 10y ago
  This is true for small spreadsheets, and one reason why I love Excel for quick analyses. Debugging is nearly instant because you see the results as you go along. But it doesn't scale very well. --If you want to re-use a formula, you basically have to copy-paste it. Generally there isn't much modularity. Programmers are well aware of the dangers of this. --It's also not a friendly platform for writing regression tests (possible with VB, but who does that?). --The two-dimensional nature of the spreadsheets and lack of loops means you often need to do hacky stuff to emulate multidimensional arrays or loops. Easy to make mistakes here.
- KMag 10y ago
  > Excel being visual (the formula is evaluated/tested immediatly after being entered) We generally call this "interactive" and not "visual", in order to avoid confusion with graphical programming languages. I agree that being interactive probably helps rapid iteration, debugging, and experimentation. However, Excel could still be interactive without being so fast and loose with types, accurate display of numbers, and many of the other faults others have pointed out. Also, if you're trying to make some subtle point about the reduced severity of mistakes, you mean "lesser" rather than "less", otherwise you mean "fewer". https://duckduckgo.com/?q=less+vs+fewer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=less+vs+fewer
ramblenode 10y ago
I would counter with "use the right tool for the job." Excel is great at churning out fast and dirty estimates for low impact work. The problem is when it's used for large, complex, or important problems because these are just not Excel's domain--something obvious when looking at the kinds of features and bug fixes MS has prioritized over the years.
- 7952 10y ago
  It is damning that you cannot use a basic computer tool for anything that is large, complex, or important. Isn't that exactly what computers are for? Call me idealistic but I want a spreadhseet that can handle milions of rows. Maybe add a "strict" mode to keep people out of trouble.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    You could have an option to disable any formatting in a tab, and then Excel should be able to handle a billion rows in that tab. But you can't have all the flexibility of Excel on a massive scale. Even a laptop today is insanely fast and has an insane amount of memory.
  - arethuza 10y ago
    PowerPivot in Excel does allow you to have millions of rows in tables - mind you that isn't in the standard spreadsheet functionality, but it is there.
- cm2187 10y ago
  I think the Excel team disagrees with you. I remember having even seen an Excel demo about big data on channel9 (apparently if it fits in a spreadsheet, it is still big data!). Based on the evolution of Excel, they clearly see it as a data analysis tool only, with lots of iterations of the pivot tables functionality. And clearly not as a modeling tool. My guess on Excel usage is that it is 10% of the time used for data analysis (pivot tables, time series analysis), 20% of the time used to create a simple table (planning for the week by non technical people), and 70% of the time used for modelling (business plan, tax calculations, accounting, pricing financial instruments, running an inventory, calculating something scientific/mathematic, etc). Most companies are run on Excel. For instance one thing where Excel sucks at one of its core functionalities is linking a powerpoint presentation to an Excel model. Any consultant, expert, banker, accountant, salesperson or marketer will do that all day. You can paste a table as a linked image but the formatting will be completely unstable and it is very dodgy. And no way to link a number in a textbox to Excel. Microsoft should focus on these problems rather than yet another pivot table functionality. Though office seems to be frozen time. I can't think of any major new feature since Office 2007.
10198231001 10y ago
If the programs contain errors, they are not useful. They appear to be useful to someone who just wants to see some activity instead of actual work.
- coldtea 10y ago
  All programs contain errors, and almost all output of calculations is approximate. The question is if for most of the use cases the margin of error is just fine...

by krapht 10y ago

cm2187 10y ago

In fact a lot could be said of the millions of ways to shoot oneself in the foot with programming languages. Excel being visual (the formula is evaluated/tested immediatly after being entered), I'd argue a diligent user will make less mistakes with Excel than while coding.

ethan_g 10y ago
This is true for small spreadsheets, and one reason why I love Excel for quick analyses. Debugging is nearly instant because you see the results as you go along. But it doesn't scale very well. --If you want to re-use a formula, you basically have to copy-paste it. Generally there isn't much modularity. Programmers are well aware of the dangers of this. --It's also not a friendly platform for writing regression tests (possible with VB, but who does that?). --The two-dimensional nature of the spreadsheets and lack of loops means you often need to do hacky stuff to emulate multidimensional arrays or loops. Easy to make mistakes here.
KMag 10y ago
> Excel being visual (the formula is evaluated/tested immediatly after being entered) We generally call this "interactive" and not "visual", in order to avoid confusion with graphical programming languages. I agree that being interactive probably helps rapid iteration, debugging, and experimentation. However, Excel could still be interactive without being so fast and loose with types, accurate display of numbers, and many of the other faults others have pointed out. Also, if you're trying to make some subtle point about the reduced severity of mistakes, you mean "lesser" rather than "less", otherwise you mean "fewer". https://duckduckgo.com/?q=less+vs+fewer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=less+vs+fewer

ramblenode 10y ago

I would counter with "use the right tool for the job." Excel is great at churning out fast and dirty estimates for low impact work. The problem is when it's used for large, complex, or important problems because these are just not Excel's domain--something obvious when looking at the kinds of features and bug fixes MS has prioritized over the years.

7952 10y ago
It is damning that you cannot use a basic computer tool for anything that is large, complex, or important. Isn't that exactly what computers are for? Call me idealistic but I want a spreadhseet that can handle milions of rows. Maybe add a "strict" mode to keep people out of trouble.
- cm2187 10y ago
  You could have an option to disable any formatting in a tab, and then Excel should be able to handle a billion rows in that tab. But you can't have all the flexibility of Excel on a massive scale. Even a laptop today is insanely fast and has an insane amount of memory.
- arethuza 10y ago
  PowerPivot in Excel does allow you to have millions of rows in tables - mind you that isn't in the standard spreadsheet functionality, but it is there.
cm2187 10y ago
I think the Excel team disagrees with you. I remember having even seen an Excel demo about big data on channel9 (apparently if it fits in a spreadsheet, it is still big data!). Based on the evolution of Excel, they clearly see it as a data analysis tool only, with lots of iterations of the pivot tables functionality. And clearly not as a modeling tool. My guess on Excel usage is that it is 10% of the time used for data analysis (pivot tables, time series analysis), 20% of the time used to create a simple table (planning for the week by non technical people), and 70% of the time used for modelling (business plan, tax calculations, accounting, pricing financial instruments, running an inventory, calculating something scientific/mathematic, etc). Most companies are run on Excel. For instance one thing where Excel sucks at one of its core functionalities is linking a powerpoint presentation to an Excel model. Any consultant, expert, banker, accountant, salesperson or marketer will do that all day. You can paste a table as a linked image but the formatting will be completely unstable and it is very dodgy. And no way to link a number in a textbox to Excel. Microsoft should focus on these problems rather than yet another pivot table functionality. Though office seems to be frozen time. I can't think of any major new feature since Office 2007.

10198231001 10y ago

If the programs contain errors, they are not useful. They appear to be useful to someone who just wants to see some activity instead of actual work.

coldtea 10y ago
All programs contain errors, and almost all output of calculations is approximate. The question is if for most of the use cases the margin of error is just fine...