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People are wedded to Excel because they've spent a lot of time learning it and don't want their skills to become obsolete. The resistance is rooted in psycholo

People are wedded to Excel because they've spent a lot of time learning it and don't want their skills to become obsolete. The resistance is rooted in psychological / political reasons, not technical ones.

throwaway2048 9y ago
Google sheets has a vastly inferior performance and feature set, trying to chalk that up as "psychological / political reasons" is pure spin.
sevensor 9y ago
I disagree. For users who aren't going to make the leap to "real" programming, spreadsheets are a huge boon. Excel is the only thing many domain experts can use to turn their knowledge into a computational model. Sure, there are tons of problems compared to models implemented in general-purpose programming languages, and we love to complain about the atrocities committed in Excel, but nobody's yet managed to devise an alternative with the same low barrier to entry.
- itomato 9y ago
  Spreadsheets are a huge risk to everyone, especially those who haven't made the leap to "real" programming. Excel, 1-2-3, Visicalc are, taxonomically speaking, in the same class. We have a new order of tools. While they have their own inherent risks, they reflect literally decades of thinking about the risks and limitations of tools whose lineage traces back to Visicalc. Macro management and security, versioning, distributed access, multidimensionality; all are addressed in a handful of ways with Alpha, Tableau, Looker and other progressive tools. Excel, floppies, line printers; relics.
- noobhacker 9y ago
  I agree 100% that Excel is best for people who aren't going to make the leap#. My point is that domain experts should* make the leap to "real" programming, especially R to handle data analysis. Excel is faster to get started. But for advanced tasks, the time it takes to learn Excel / R is about the same. A big reason why people don't make the leap is because they already spent too much time becoming an Excel expert. Indeed, for young analysts with no baggage, a lot of people learn and use R instead.
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
Have you ever been a power user of Microsoft Excel? And then tried to replicate that functionality in Google Sheets? Or is your aversion mostly to the M- word? I find it funny that when it comes to vi vs emacs (or any such similarly geek-approved thing), fans of each will jump up in arms about the precise reason their platform is better, but the same kind of people would not want to take hundreds of thousands of business professionals at their word about why they like using a particular piece of software.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  Probably because the geeks can consider the virtues of making a spreadsheet vs an application while the office workers are incapable of understanding more than half the equation. Also office workers can't always be trusted to even plug things in let alone properly assess what an optimal solution looks like.
  - vilmosi 9y ago
    Geeks aren't as smart as they think they are. Particularly when it comes to business requirements. I'm guilty of that as much as anyone.
- noobhacker 9y ago
  I come from a data analysis background, and I'm thinking about R / Python as the alternative to Excel, not Google Sheets. People used to use Excel to run regression, visualize data, etc. which I consider inferior to R / Python. I can't speak about other uses of Excel, e.g. financial modeling, insurance.

throwaway2048 9y ago

Google sheets has a vastly inferior performance and feature set, trying to chalk that up as "psychological / political reasons" is pure spin.

sevensor 9y ago

I disagree. For users who aren't going to make the leap to "real" programming, spreadsheets are a huge boon. Excel is the only thing many domain experts can use to turn their knowledge into a computational model. Sure, there are tons of problems compared to models implemented in general-purpose programming languages, and we love to complain about the atrocities committed in Excel, but nobody's yet managed to devise an alternative with the same low barrier to entry.

itomato 9y ago
Spreadsheets are a huge risk to everyone, especially those who haven't made the leap to "real" programming. Excel, 1-2-3, Visicalc are, taxonomically speaking, in the same class. We have a new order of tools. While they have their own inherent risks, they reflect literally decades of thinking about the risks and limitations of tools whose lineage traces back to Visicalc. Macro management and security, versioning, distributed access, multidimensionality; all are addressed in a handful of ways with Alpha, Tableau, Looker and other progressive tools. Excel, floppies, line printers; relics.
noobhacker 9y ago
I agree 100% that Excel is best for people who aren't going to make the leap#. My point is that domain experts should* make the leap to "real" programming, especially R to handle data analysis. Excel is faster to get started. But for advanced tasks, the time it takes to learn Excel / R is about the same. A big reason why people don't make the leap is because they already spent too much time becoming an Excel expert. Indeed, for young analysts with no baggage, a lot of people learn and use R instead.

kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago

Have you ever been a power user of Microsoft Excel? And then tried to replicate that functionality in Google Sheets? Or is your aversion mostly to the M- word? I find it funny that when it comes to vi vs emacs (or any such similarly geek-approved thing), fans of each will jump up in arms about the precise reason their platform is better, but the same kind of people would not want to take hundreds of thousands of business professionals at their word about why they like using a particular piece of software.

michaelmrose 9y ago
Probably because the geeks can consider the virtues of making a spreadsheet vs an application while the office workers are incapable of understanding more than half the equation. Also office workers can't always be trusted to even plug things in let alone properly assess what an optimal solution looks like.
- vilmosi 9y ago
  Geeks aren't as smart as they think they are. Particularly when it comes to business requirements. I'm guilty of that as much as anyone.
noobhacker 9y ago
I come from a data analysis background, and I'm thinking about R / Python as the alternative to Excel, not Google Sheets. People used to use Excel to run regression, visualize data, etc. which I consider inferior to R / Python. I can't speak about other uses of Excel, e.g. financial modeling, insurance.