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Among all the software that came out of Microsoft, Excel is one fine software. The other one is Solitaire.

by jimmies 9y ago

aaronbrethorst 9y ago
Ski Free.
- Terretta 9y ago
  Microsoft Bob (codename "Utopia", seriously) “Assistants” and the vestigial Office Paperclip beat Siri, Home, and Cortana to the punch, commercial products anticipating agents and chatbots by two decades. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
  - paulie_a 9y ago
    Microsoft Bob was an abomination on so many levels
    - tjoff 9y ago
      Arguably so is Siri, Cortana and Home too.
tinus_hn 9y ago
Excel is quite powerful but it also tries to do too much and does a lot of it badly. Solitaire does one thing and it does it quite well.
- ubermonkey 9y ago
  SO true. Imagine how much important business knowledge is tied up in an Excel macro, or -- God forbid -- in a ridiculously long formula stored in cell Q237 or whatever. Less snarkily, Excel is so capable that lots of office workers learn IT and never bother going any deeper, and so they do things like re-inventing relational databases using Excel, etc.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Imagine how much important business knowledge is tied up in an Excel macro, or -- God forbid -- in a ridiculously long formula stored in cell Q237 or whatever. Often none, and that's the bigger problem; those aren't vehicles that are good for storing business knowledge, so the business knowledge that went into them is often either stuck in someone's head (who may have left long ago) or lost entirely. An (possibly entirely correct in context, possibly not) application of that knowledge in a particular context is captured in the macro or formula, but the knowledge itself, including the factors from the context contributing to the particular application, is not captured.
    - ubermonkey 9y ago
      Fair point for sure. And this whole malady is especially common in finance departments, which are (typically) horribly documented anyway. It's all institutional knowledge, and those in that area tend to be long-term employees who don't know the difference between "things that are part of accounting and finance everywhere" and "things that are idiosyncratic to Acme Corp."

Among all the software that came out of Microsoft, Excel is one fine software. The other one is Solitaire.

aaronbrethorst 9y ago

Ski Free.

Terretta 9y ago
Microsoft Bob (codename "Utopia", seriously) “Assistants” and the vestigial Office Paperclip beat Siri, Home, and Cortana to the punch, commercial products anticipating agents and chatbots by two decades. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
- paulie_a 9y ago
  Microsoft Bob was an abomination on so many levels
  - tjoff 9y ago
    Arguably so is Siri, Cortana and Home too.

tinus_hn 9y ago

Excel is quite powerful but it also tries to do too much and does a lot of it badly. Solitaire does one thing and it does it quite well.

ubermonkey 9y ago
SO true. Imagine how much important business knowledge is tied up in an Excel macro, or -- God forbid -- in a ridiculously long formula stored in cell Q237 or whatever. Less snarkily, Excel is so capable that lots of office workers learn IT and never bother going any deeper, and so they do things like re-inventing relational databases using Excel, etc.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Imagine how much important business knowledge is tied up in an Excel macro, or -- God forbid -- in a ridiculously long formula stored in cell Q237 or whatever. Often none, and that's the bigger problem; those aren't vehicles that are good for storing business knowledge, so the business knowledge that went into them is often either stuck in someone's head (who may have left long ago) or lost entirely. An (possibly entirely correct in context, possibly not) application of that knowledge in a particular context is captured in the macro or formula, but the knowledge itself, including the factors from the context contributing to the particular application, is not captured.
  - ubermonkey 9y ago
    Fair point for sure. And this whole malady is especially common in finance departments, which are (typically) horribly documented anyway. It's all institutional knowledge, and those in that area tend to be long-term employees who don't know the difference between "things that are part of accounting and finance everywhere" and "things that are idiosyncratic to Acme Corp."