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I think pragmatic businesses that employ finance pros / quants are wise to include Excel as an essential part of their product development workflow. Excel is a

I think pragmatic businesses that employ finance pros / quants are wise to include Excel as an essential part of their product development workflow. Excel is a great prototyping tool, and people are going to use it whether you want them to or not. These folks are motivated by money and don't give a shit about your tool if (they think) it costs them money (or time). Besides that, how many enterprise applications really offer opportunity for prototyping and running small experiments? Excel is to modeling as wireframing is to UI design. Someone should write a book about productionizing excel models. It's not going away (and shouldn't).

d--b 9y ago
> Someone should write a book Nah, this is not gonna work... The only way out is to make something that's somewhat like a spreadsheet but with source control, a nicer language etc. I was writing it and then the firm I was working out threatened to sue me for bullshit IP infringement...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Sounds like Excel needs a git extension!
  - yosyp 9y ago
    A quick google search shows some people are already working on that, including https://www.pathio.com https://www.pathio.com
    - uridium 9y ago
      Schematiq - https://www.schematiq.com https://www.schematiq.com also handles source control for spreadsheet and a lot more. The platform is about making sheets enterprise grade applications - regression, testing, CI etc and introduces new features to simplify spreadsheet logic.
      - ccozan 9y ago
        I remember I wrote not long ago a VB Macro for Excel, where all the VB code inside was imported/exported, git pull/commit+push, etc, all of a button push. It became an instant hit in that company and I short of a medal :).
    - fzumstein 9y ago
      Note that Pathio has been relaunched as https://www.xltrail.com https://www.xltrail.com - it supports the standard Git workflow and every Git system (GitHub, Bitbucket, Gitlab etc.).
jimmcslim 9y ago
Or seek greater adoption of standards around spreadsheets, such as FAST [1].. Flexible, Appropriate, Structured, Transparent. [1] http://www.fast-standard.org/ http://www.fast-standard.org/
opportune 9y ago
Ehh I doubt most quants are interacting much with Excel except when they need to work with non-quants. There's not much of a reason to use Excel when you could use something like Pandas instead, plus the Python libraries/environment will make everything non-tabled better to deal with anyway.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- djtriptych 9y ago
  it's different now but historically quants were not well versed in software engineering. If anything it would have been R 10-15 years ago.
  - kgwgk 9y ago
    R was almost irrelevant in finance 10 years ago, Matlab was much more widely used. R may have more momentum now, but I’m not sure it has overtaken Matlab yet. And C++ was, and probably remains, king.
    - vostok 9y ago
      I think a lot of the discrepancy is explained by the fact that quant is a very widely applied title. There are quants who spend most of their day in Excel and quants who spend most of their day in C++.
  - hardlianotion 9y ago
    10-15 years ago it was excel excel excel for quants in most investment banks.

d--b 9y ago

> Someone should write a book Nah, this is not gonna work... The only way out is to make something that's somewhat like a spreadsheet but with source control, a nicer language etc. I was writing it and then the firm I was working out threatened to sue me for bullshit IP infringement...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 9y ago
Sounds like Excel needs a git extension!
- yosyp 9y ago
  A quick google search shows some people are already working on that, including https://www.pathio.com https://www.pathio.com
  - uridium 9y ago
    Schematiq - https://www.schematiq.com https://www.schematiq.com also handles source control for spreadsheet and a lot more. The platform is about making sheets enterprise grade applications - regression, testing, CI etc and introduces new features to simplify spreadsheet logic.
    - ccozan 9y ago
      I remember I wrote not long ago a VB Macro for Excel, where all the VB code inside was imported/exported, git pull/commit+push, etc, all of a button push. It became an instant hit in that company and I short of a medal :).
  - fzumstein 9y ago
    Note that Pathio has been relaunched as https://www.xltrail.com https://www.xltrail.com - it supports the standard Git workflow and every Git system (GitHub, Bitbucket, Gitlab etc.).

jimmcslim 9y ago

Or seek greater adoption of standards around spreadsheets, such as FAST [1].. Flexible, Appropriate, Structured, Transparent. [1] http://www.fast-standard.org/ http://www.fast-standard.org/

opportune 9y ago

Ehh I doubt most quants are interacting much with Excel except when they need to work with non-quants. There's not much of a reason to use Excel when you could use something like Pandas instead, plus the Python libraries/environment will make everything non-tabled better to deal with anyway.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
djtriptych 9y ago
it's different now but historically quants were not well versed in software engineering. If anything it would have been R 10-15 years ago.
- kgwgk 9y ago
  R was almost irrelevant in finance 10 years ago, Matlab was much more widely used. R may have more momentum now, but I’m not sure it has overtaken Matlab yet. And C++ was, and probably remains, king.
  - vostok 9y ago
    I think a lot of the discrepancy is explained by the fact that quant is a very widely applied title. There are quants who spend most of their day in Excel and quants who spend most of their day in C++.
- hardlianotion 9y ago
  10-15 years ago it was excel excel excel for quants in most investment banks.