7 ms·

At this point I look at Word and Excel the same way I look at bash, gcc, grep, sed, awk, et cetera: there is so much iniertia that even when different and argua

by SllX 8y ago

At this point I look at Word and Excel the same way I look at bash, gcc, grep, sed, awk, et cetera: there is so much iniertia that even when different and arguably better tools come along, it still never truly goes away. A lot of people still use emacs, vim, BBEdit and so on, but a lot of people also use IntelliJ, VSCode and Atom or whatever is in vogue this year. Vim and emacs will never truly go away no matter how many CPU architectures or operating systems come along this century, and neither will Word. At some point software is just infrastructure. We can build better bridges than we could a century ago, but there isn’t an incentive to replace a bridge until it falls down, and it isn’t like Word prevented Markdown and TeX and HTML from finding their niches.

omeid2 8y ago
Some other important factor about the software you have listed is that they are actively maintained, either because they have a community or a profitable enterprise behind them, I don't think inertia alone is enough.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jen729w 8y ago
Word, yes. Word is a turd. Word needs to die. Excel, however, is magic. Forget the nasty ribbon interface and the horrid MS window chrome, I'm just talking about what happens inside those cells. Say what you will about Microsoft as a company, about the fact that Excel is possibly over-used and that users should probably get a database. I don't care. Excel, at its core, is a magical product. Nothing else gets close to its functionality/friction curve (assuming you already know how to Excel, that is).
- dvtrn 8y ago
  Is this truly attributable to what Excel is actually capable of (excluding those cases like people who manage to accomplish things like 3D rendering with excel) or that Excel just has better market saturation and is, by default, the only spreadsheet tool people in the Enterprise are given to work with and we just normalized ourselves to what it does, but maybe not so many other spreadsheet file formats?
  - Elrac 8y ago
    I also think Excel is great; but not because it's Excel or heavens forbid, because it's a Microsoft product, but because it's a spreadsheet. The ability to throw data in a grid and massage it with operations the average human can understand - that's invaluable. Certainly, Excel is powerful and feature-filled. But 95% or more of what I do in Excel I can also do in Google Sheets or Libre Calc or whatever.
    - Mikeb85 8y ago
      This. All of what I'd ever want to do to a spreadsheet Google Sheets can do, and whatever the 'power' Excel user thinks is a good idea to use Excel for I can do far more easily in R.
      - ci5er 8y ago
        You can. G'donya. If you print a report on the result - you're done. Bottoms up, mate. If you are collaborating - the issue isn't tools that you and I might know that may or may not be better than Excel (like R), it's that we've got to share our work with people who may or may not know those tools. I believe (personally) that Excel almost singularly is a tool that both the adept and novice can use together. And, you know, if you want to spin your twirly six shooter, you can always do a monte carlo simulation in C, print out the results as CSV and import it into Excel for the (I'm sure you would call them) more benighted amongst your co-workers.
        rectang 8y ago
        > we've got to share our work with people who may or may not know those tools We can acknowledge the power of network effects while at the same time critiquing design. They both have utility, but they are entirely separate.
        Mikeb85 8y ago
        Except times are changing, and maybe we won't see it until baby boomers are all retired, but a lot of younger people are far more adept at using technology and coding is becoming far more popular. In university, we had to learn Python and SQL in a CS for Business introduction course, R for stats, and while we did learn some Excel, for anything related to stats, econ or even finance we used other tools primarily. Just like MS woke up one day to the fact it no longer has a strangle hold on computing, the same will happen to Excel, but maybe in 10 years. There are better tools and the people who cling to Excel are on the way out.
- amphibian87 8y ago
  Why don't you like Word? I think it's still going to be the best for a while, if not only because it's massive. My CS professor says it's the biggest program ever written. It can so so much, like check for passive voice and more subtle grammar things. At the end of the day, the subscription model is off-putting, but "needs to die?" why?
  - wes-t 8y ago
    I can only assume you're asking because you're not using it for you day-to-day job?
  - SllX 8y ago
    1. Your CS professor does not sound very good at his job judging purely from the very tiny amount of information you have shared. I am sorry you have to deal with that. 2. I, at no point, stated or even implied that Word needs to die. I am largely indifferent towards Word. It is a piece of infrastructure that other people rely on, and as such, it will continue to have a place on the market. My point is that it was Infrastructure at all, not to criticize others for using it, or Microsoft for continuing to develop it, or the Office team for their work on it. This is true for many projects, and overall there seems to be a type of software which becomes infrastructure and will never be replaced even when software critics believe it should be replaced.
  - rococode 8y ago
    The entire 2013 Microsoft Office suite clocked in at ~45m lines of code, so Word is not even close to some of the really large programs considering Office also includes Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, etc. [1] While we're on the subject, the biggest issue I personally have with Word is formatting, specifically dealing with images, tables, and padding. I feel that it's pretty satisfactory for day-to-day tasks, though. [1] https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/ https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-li...
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Personally, I like Word, because it has a particular niche - fast WYSIWYG use and mid-sized documents. That is, I can quickly make the exact nice-looking document I need, and print it. Without clunky UX (of Open/LibreOffice), and without it choking on mid-sized documents that's characteristic of GSuite and friends.
- arkh 8y ago
  Not even inside the cells. Excel column / rows filters. Hard to do better than those. I wish a lot more apps with data implemented something half as good.
- rusk 8y ago
  My two weapons of choice: Excel for structured data, Emacs for unstructured data.
  - xte 8y ago
    Why the hell a spreadsheet? Why not use any scripting language you want with org-table/org-babel or with some ORM/driver to access datas?
    - rusk 8y ago
      Because it's convenient, and I can share. Not to mention the fact that Excel isn't "just a spreadsheet". I could go on, but most of the other sibling comments here have expounded enough upon her virtues. EDIT LOL ORM/driver - because life's too short that's why
      - xte 8y ago
        Mh, for me just because life is too short I never really learned spreadsheet software (and I have seen many disaster made thanks to them, including important institutional and scientific ones) and I'm happy without them... Try to look for some Emacs demos on YT&c, perhaps you'll discover a different world :-)
        glaberficken 8y ago
        Is that really a solid argument? Haven't you also seen numerous "disasters made" with other platforms / tools / programming languages "including in important institutional and scientific ones"? (no snark intended)
        xte 8y ago
        Well, yes but far less... I see Ariane 5 disaster due to an overflow error, but never seen the International monetary found that publish a false study due to an excel calculus bug nor scientific studies with false result due to excel bugs... Spreadsheets IME are environment that really help human error and disguise them well enough... About solidity I can't answer having not enough data, I can only say that I still have to see anything more efficient than Emacs in the world and I see software since around twenty years...
- xte 8y ago
  Mh, I have sometimes to work with "tabular datas" that seems to fit well with spreadsheets... Before I discover org-mode and Emacs I normally use *sv sources/exports and CLI tools simply because I never being able to be productive or in comfort with ANY spreadsheet I tried. Now I'm in org with tables and babel I never look back. IMO spreadsheets are a poor and ineffective answer to the miss of a serious desktop database tool with a nice DSL for end users.
- piker 8y ago
  > Word, yes. Word is a turd. Word needs to die. It's not clear you'd find a lot of lawyers (i.e., a class of power small-document-scale Word users) that would agree with this sentiment.
  - matthewmcg 8y ago
    I am an attorney and I use Word exclusively and intensively. And I hate it. All of my colleagues hate it too.
    - wglb 8y ago
      What would your preference be?
- Quarrelsome 8y ago
  Excel needs to die or find a better means of placing process on top of hideously embedded business logic that lives inside those sheets. Trying to reign in the entropy of VBA macros across an organisation is a _massive_ headache.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> We can build better bridges than we could a century ago, but there isn’t an incentive to replace a bridge until it falls down WRT. Emacs/vim vs. VSCode/Atom, I can only say that we may know how to build better bridges than in the past, but for some reason we opt not to. It's like the goal of new software is everything except empowering users. Optimizing for ease of onboarding, for looks, for extracting value from users via business model trickery, etc. But not for utility.

by SllX 8y ago

omeid2 8y ago

Some other important factor about the software you have listed is that they are actively maintained, either because they have a community or a profitable enterprise behind them, I don't think inertia alone is enough.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jen729w 8y ago

Word, yes. Word is a turd. Word needs to die. Excel, however, is magic. Forget the nasty ribbon interface and the horrid MS window chrome, I'm just talking about what happens inside those cells. Say what you will about Microsoft as a company, about the fact that Excel is possibly over-used and that users should probably get a database. I don't care. Excel, at its core, is a magical product. Nothing else gets close to its functionality/friction curve (assuming you already know how to Excel, that is).

dvtrn 8y ago
Is this truly attributable to what Excel is actually capable of (excluding those cases like people who manage to accomplish things like 3D rendering with excel) or that Excel just has better market saturation and is, by default, the only spreadsheet tool people in the Enterprise are given to work with and we just normalized ourselves to what it does, but maybe not so many other spreadsheet file formats?
- Elrac 8y ago
  I also think Excel is great; but not because it's Excel or heavens forbid, because it's a Microsoft product, but because it's a spreadsheet. The ability to throw data in a grid and massage it with operations the average human can understand - that's invaluable. Certainly, Excel is powerful and feature-filled. But 95% or more of what I do in Excel I can also do in Google Sheets or Libre Calc or whatever.
  - Mikeb85 8y ago
    This. All of what I'd ever want to do to a spreadsheet Google Sheets can do, and whatever the 'power' Excel user thinks is a good idea to use Excel for I can do far more easily in R.
    - ci5er 8y ago
      You can. G'donya. If you print a report on the result - you're done. Bottoms up, mate. If you are collaborating - the issue isn't tools that you and I might know that may or may not be better than Excel (like R), it's that we've got to share our work with people who may or may not know those tools. I believe (personally) that Excel almost singularly is a tool that both the adept and novice can use together. And, you know, if you want to spin your twirly six shooter, you can always do a monte carlo simulation in C, print out the results as CSV and import it into Excel for the (I'm sure you would call them) more benighted amongst your co-workers.
      - rectang 8y ago
        > we've got to share our work with people who may or may not know those tools We can acknowledge the power of network effects while at the same time critiquing design. They both have utility, but they are entirely separate.
      - Mikeb85 8y ago
        Except times are changing, and maybe we won't see it until baby boomers are all retired, but a lot of younger people are far more adept at using technology and coding is becoming far more popular. In university, we had to learn Python and SQL in a CS for Business introduction course, R for stats, and while we did learn some Excel, for anything related to stats, econ or even finance we used other tools primarily. Just like MS woke up one day to the fact it no longer has a strangle hold on computing, the same will happen to Excel, but maybe in 10 years. There are better tools and the people who cling to Excel are on the way out.
amphibian87 8y ago
Why don't you like Word? I think it's still going to be the best for a while, if not only because it's massive. My CS professor says it's the biggest program ever written. It can so so much, like check for passive voice and more subtle grammar things. At the end of the day, the subscription model is off-putting, but "needs to die?" why?
- wes-t 8y ago
  I can only assume you're asking because you're not using it for you day-to-day job?
- SllX 8y ago
  1. Your CS professor does not sound very good at his job judging purely from the very tiny amount of information you have shared. I am sorry you have to deal with that. 2. I, at no point, stated or even implied that Word needs to die. I am largely indifferent towards Word. It is a piece of infrastructure that other people rely on, and as such, it will continue to have a place on the market. My point is that it was Infrastructure at all, not to criticize others for using it, or Microsoft for continuing to develop it, or the Office team for their work on it. This is true for many projects, and overall there seems to be a type of software which becomes infrastructure and will never be replaced even when software critics believe it should be replaced.
- rococode 8y ago
  The entire 2013 Microsoft Office suite clocked in at ~45m lines of code, so Word is not even close to some of the really large programs considering Office also includes Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, etc. [1] While we're on the subject, the biggest issue I personally have with Word is formatting, specifically dealing with images, tables, and padding. I feel that it's pretty satisfactory for day-to-day tasks, though. [1] https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/ https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-li...
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Personally, I like Word, because it has a particular niche - fast WYSIWYG use and mid-sized documents. That is, I can quickly make the exact nice-looking document I need, and print it. Without clunky UX (of Open/LibreOffice), and without it choking on mid-sized documents that's characteristic of GSuite and friends.
arkh 8y ago
Not even inside the cells. Excel column / rows filters. Hard to do better than those. I wish a lot more apps with data implemented something half as good.
rusk 8y ago
My two weapons of choice: Excel for structured data, Emacs for unstructured data.
- xte 8y ago
  Why the hell a spreadsheet? Why not use any scripting language you want with org-table/org-babel or with some ORM/driver to access datas?
  - rusk 8y ago
    Because it's convenient, and I can share. Not to mention the fact that Excel isn't "just a spreadsheet". I could go on, but most of the other sibling comments here have expounded enough upon her virtues. EDIT LOL ORM/driver - because life's too short that's why
    - xte 8y ago
      Mh, for me just because life is too short I never really learned spreadsheet software (and I have seen many disaster made thanks to them, including important institutional and scientific ones) and I'm happy without them... Try to look for some Emacs demos on YT&c, perhaps you'll discover a different world :-)
      - glaberficken 8y ago
        Is that really a solid argument? Haven't you also seen numerous "disasters made" with other platforms / tools / programming languages "including in important institutional and scientific ones"? (no snark intended)
        xte 8y ago
        Well, yes but far less... I see Ariane 5 disaster due to an overflow error, but never seen the International monetary found that publish a false study due to an excel calculus bug nor scientific studies with false result due to excel bugs... Spreadsheets IME are environment that really help human error and disguise them well enough... About solidity I can't answer having not enough data, I can only say that I still have to see anything more efficient than Emacs in the world and I see software since around twenty years...
xte 8y ago
Mh, I have sometimes to work with "tabular datas" that seems to fit well with spreadsheets... Before I discover org-mode and Emacs I normally use *sv sources/exports and CLI tools simply because I never being able to be productive or in comfort with ANY spreadsheet I tried. Now I'm in org with tables and babel I never look back. IMO spreadsheets are a poor and ineffective answer to the miss of a serious desktop database tool with a nice DSL for end users.
piker 8y ago
> Word, yes. Word is a turd. Word needs to die. It's not clear you'd find a lot of lawyers (i.e., a class of power small-document-scale Word users) that would agree with this sentiment.
- matthewmcg 8y ago
  I am an attorney and I use Word exclusively and intensively. And I hate it. All of my colleagues hate it too.
  - wglb 8y ago
    What would your preference be?
Quarrelsome 8y ago
Excel needs to die or find a better means of placing process on top of hideously embedded business logic that lives inside those sheets. Trying to reign in the entropy of VBA macros across an organisation is a _massive_ headache.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> We can build better bridges than we could a century ago, but there isn’t an incentive to replace a bridge until it falls down WRT. Emacs/vim vs. VSCode/Atom, I can only say that we may know how to build better bridges than in the past, but for some reason we opt not to. It's like the goal of new software is everything except empowering users. Optimizing for ease of onboarding, for looks, for extracting value from users via business model trickery, etc. But not for utility.