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Spreadsheets are like FORTRAN: If you have certain, specific needs, they're the best tool for the job. However, they're not the best tool in the general case, a

Spreadsheets are like FORTRAN: If you have certain, specific needs, they're the best tool for the job. However, they're not the best tool in the general case, and if you learned another programming tool first, you will recoil in disgust from some of the more non-ideal uses of it. At the end of the day, though, it gets the job done. I never really learned spreadsheets, so for most of the (very simple) work I have to do that would involve spreadsheets, I use AWK.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
> if you learned another programming tool first, you will recoil in disgust from some of the more non-ideal uses of it Will you? I've learned plenty of programming tools and I recoil in disgust at the sight of them - of all the bullshit you need to jump through to get anything done, and the arcane (and constantly changing!) knowledge you need to have to make it work. Spreadsheets are pretty much the best tool out there for exploratory work with numbers. And because the masses don't think of it as "programming", they still build suprisingly complex models and tools within the spreadsheets, when otherwise they'd likely be scared away. Personally, I'm in a process of learning Excel in depth - the more I work with it, the more I like it. It's like a REPL for moderate-complexity data processing and visualization.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  >I've learned plenty of programming tools and I recoil in disgust at the sight of them As do I. >Spreadsheets are pretty much the best tool out there for exploratory work with numbers. That's an ideal use of a spreadsheet. A non-ideal use would be, say, re-inventing the RDBMS in Excel (perhaps the most common one, but there are far worse sins). >Personally, I'm in a process of learning Excel in depth I would, but I don't have the time. As I've said: with the sort of data analysis I'm doing (very little), AWK works well enough.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> if you learned another programming tool first, you will recoil in disgust from some of the more non-ideal uses of it Will you? I've learned plenty of programming tools and I recoil in disgust at the sight of them - of all the bullshit you need to jump through to get anything done, and the arcane (and constantly changing!) knowledge you need to have to make it work. Spreadsheets are pretty much the best tool out there for exploratory work with numbers. And because the masses don't think of it as "programming", they still build suprisingly complex models and tools within the spreadsheets, when otherwise they'd likely be scared away. Personally, I'm in a process of learning Excel in depth - the more I work with it, the more I like it. It's like a REPL for moderate-complexity data processing and visualization.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
>I've learned plenty of programming tools and I recoil in disgust at the sight of them As do I. >Spreadsheets are pretty much the best tool out there for exploratory work with numbers. That's an ideal use of a spreadsheet. A non-ideal use would be, say, re-inventing the RDBMS in Excel (perhaps the most common one, but there are far worse sins). >Personally, I'm in a process of learning Excel in depth I would, but I don't have the time. As I've said: with the sort of data analysis I'm doing (very little), AWK works well enough.