4 ms·

But there could be errors hiding anywhere. All you know is it looks correct.

dwaltrip 9y ago
Sure, but the cost to fix that issue, and the flexibility you have to give up to do so, is apparently not worth it most of the time, if we look at how people use the software. Perhaps there is a systematic undervaluing of more polished, robust custom solutions by excel users across the world. That could be the case. But there is also probably an under-supply of adequate custom solutions. I have seen comments over the years on HN from people who have had much success in consultanting gigs where they simply built custom tools to replace ad-hoc workflows and processes living in places like Excel.
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  > Sure, but the cost to fix that issue, and the flexibility you have to give up to do so, is apparently not worth it most of the time, if we look at how people use the software. That's not true. People just don't know any better. Look around you and you'll see many people using the wrong tools. It doesn't mean they've made a rational decision to use those, it usually means they're not aware of a better alternative.
- lmm 9y ago
  All existing business processes tolerate high error rates. They have to, because anything that people do by hand will necessarily have a high error rate. So when programmers come to automate an existing business process, they often vastly overestimate the value of correctness at least in the short term: if the program does the wrong thing even 1% of the time, it's really not a problem, because the processes around this process will be built to tolerate that. In the long term, correctness may become more valuable. An analogy: when factories first switched to electric power, they simply connected electric motors to the existing driveshafts used to distribute steam power around the factory, and only realised small improvements in productivity that way. But once factories were more fully converted to electric power, it became possible to rearrange machines to suit workflows (rather than being arranged around the driveshafts) and this lead to much bigger productivity gains.
coldtea 9y ago
You don't get any better assurances on the cli.
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  What do you mean by "the cli"? Garbage in/garbage out always applies, that's not what I'm talking about. The point is errors in the code doing the processing. If it's written in a language you can read and understand the entire thing. You cannot read and understand an entire spreadsheet.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >You cannot read and understand an entire spreadsheet. Why wouldn't you? Except if you mean the internal implementation (by MS). But nobody reads the implementation of Pandas or R either...
    - adrianN 9y ago
      A spreadsheet doesn't offer you a linear story that you can read. It's a strange amalgamation of computation and program.
    - cup-of-tea 9y ago
      I'm not talking about reading the underlying implementation, although that is, of course, another advantage of Python and R. I'm talking about reading the project. What's your process for reading a spreadsheet? Reading every single cell?
      - telchar 9y ago
        That's a good point. In a block of 10,000 cells that should all have the same formula (offset by 1, say) how do you know that they all actually have that same formula? I'm not aware of a way to check that that doesn't involve writing custom VBA.

Sure, but the cost to fix that issue, and the flexibility you have to give up to do so, is apparently not worth it most of the time, if we look at how people use the software. Perhaps there is a systematic undervaluing of more polished, robust custom solutions by excel users across the world. That could be the case. But there is also probably an under-supply of adequate custom solutions. I have seen comments over the years on HN from people who have had much success in consultanting gigs where they simply built custom tools to replace ad-hoc workflows and processes living in places like Excel.

cup-of-tea 9y ago
> Sure, but the cost to fix that issue, and the flexibility you have to give up to do so, is apparently not worth it most of the time, if we look at how people use the software. That's not true. People just don't know any better. Look around you and you'll see many people using the wrong tools. It doesn't mean they've made a rational decision to use those, it usually means they're not aware of a better alternative.
lmm 9y ago
All existing business processes tolerate high error rates. They have to, because anything that people do by hand will necessarily have a high error rate. So when programmers come to automate an existing business process, they often vastly overestimate the value of correctness at least in the short term: if the program does the wrong thing even 1% of the time, it's really not a problem, because the processes around this process will be built to tolerate that. In the long term, correctness may become more valuable. An analogy: when factories first switched to electric power, they simply connected electric motors to the existing driveshafts used to distribute steam power around the factory, and only realised small improvements in productivity that way. But once factories were more fully converted to electric power, it became possible to rearrange machines to suit workflows (rather than being arranged around the driveshafts) and this lead to much bigger productivity gains.

coldtea 9y ago

You don't get any better assurances on the cli.

cup-of-tea 9y ago
What do you mean by "the cli"? Garbage in/garbage out always applies, that's not what I'm talking about. The point is errors in the code doing the processing. If it's written in a language you can read and understand the entire thing. You cannot read and understand an entire spreadsheet.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >You cannot read and understand an entire spreadsheet. Why wouldn't you? Except if you mean the internal implementation (by MS). But nobody reads the implementation of Pandas or R either...
  - adrianN 9y ago
    A spreadsheet doesn't offer you a linear story that you can read. It's a strange amalgamation of computation and program.
  - cup-of-tea 9y ago
    I'm not talking about reading the underlying implementation, although that is, of course, another advantage of Python and R. I'm talking about reading the project. What's your process for reading a spreadsheet? Reading every single cell?
    - telchar 9y ago
      That's a good point. In a block of 10,000 cells that should all have the same formula (offset by 1, say) how do you know that they all actually have that same formula? I'm not aware of a way to check that that doesn't involve writing custom VBA.