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I wouldn't go as far as to say spreadsheets are the biggest fail in computer history. In fact, I would say that they were pretty revolutionary for its time. But

I wouldn't go as far as to say spreadsheets are the biggest fail in computer history. In fact, I would say that they were pretty revolutionary for its time. But now that it's not 2001 anymore, I definitely get frustrated by some of the things we still use Excel for in 2017. I work in engineering, so my needs are a little different. I would much prefer Matlab for managing sets of data, except for its shortcomings with handling non-numerical data.

rahimnathwani 9y ago
"I definitely get frustrated by some of the things we still use Excel for in 2017." That's a testament to how bad _other_ solutions are. For most people, the UX for Excel is far superior to that of SQL, matplotlib, ggplot2, sed/awk, CRM tools, ...
mschaef 9y ago
> I definitely get frustrated by some of the things we still use Excel for in 2017. Excel suffers a lot due to the fact that its core computational model has been static for decades. While Microsoft has been good at adding commands that manipulate the grid, it's not been nearly as good at enhancing what the grid itself is capable of computing. Just to illustrate, I'm continually annoyed that 'sort' and 'histogram' are menu commands and not concepts that can be expressed with an array formula. (Although it could theoretically be done with a UDF written in VBA.) But that specific example aside, my frustration is really that the Excel expression language is the beginnings of a good dynamic functional programming language, but is missing most of the good stuff from that paradigm. (Non-scalar values, local bindings, higher order functions, custom functions aside from UDFs, etc.) What's maybe most frustrating about this is that Microsoft Research (Simon Peyton-Jones) has done several talks suggesting how it might be done. Microsoft is definitely aware of the possibilities... they've just chosen to direct their priorities elsewhere. https://www.slideshare.net/kfrdbs/peyton-jones https://www.slideshare.net/kfrdbs/peyton-jones https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/improving-worlds-popular-functional-language-user-defined-functions-excel/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/improvi...

rahimnathwani 9y ago

"I definitely get frustrated by some of the things we still use Excel for in 2017." That's a testament to how bad _other_ solutions are. For most people, the UX for Excel is far superior to that of SQL, matplotlib, ggplot2, sed/awk, CRM tools, ...

mschaef 9y ago

> I definitely get frustrated by some of the things we still use Excel for in 2017. Excel suffers a lot due to the fact that its core computational model has been static for decades. While Microsoft has been good at adding commands that manipulate the grid, it's not been nearly as good at enhancing what the grid itself is capable of computing. Just to illustrate, I'm continually annoyed that 'sort' and 'histogram' are menu commands and not concepts that can be expressed with an array formula. (Although it could theoretically be done with a UDF written in VBA.) But that specific example aside, my frustration is really that the Excel expression language is the beginnings of a good dynamic functional programming language, but is missing most of the good stuff from that paradigm. (Non-scalar values, local bindings, higher order functions, custom functions aside from UDFs, etc.) What's maybe most frustrating about this is that Microsoft Research (Simon Peyton-Jones) has done several talks suggesting how it might be done. Microsoft is definitely aware of the possibilities... they've just chosen to direct their priorities elsewhere. https://www.slideshare.net/kfrdbs/peyton-jones https://www.slideshare.net/kfrdbs/peyton-jones https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/improving-worlds-popular-functional-language-user-defined-functions-excel/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/improvi...