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I wish spreadsheets didn't get as much unnecessary hate as they do. They are a pretty great tool, and can do almost anything. They are to finance/accounting g

by mises 8y ago

I wish spreadsheets didn't get as much unnecessary hate as they do. They are a pretty great tool, and can do almost anything. They are to finance/accounting guys as shells are to many of us.

SquishyPanda23 8y ago
Finance guys and gals have shells like R or Python. Spreadsheets are GUIs for people who prefer that to shells.
- mises 8y ago
  Don't kid yourself, most finance guys still use Excel. Maybe a few younger ones in the valley use tools like R, Python, etc. but not in most places.
  - SquishyPanda23 8y ago
    > Don't kid yourself, most finance guys still use Excel. I didn't say anything about that. You said spreadsheets are like shells for finance people. I was just pointing out that shells for finance people exist and that most prefer not to use them.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
I don't think they get unnecessary hate, it's just that they have a tendency to grow in complexity to the point where a spreadsheet is no longer the right job but is still in use. I don't think it happens as much any more but the same analogy could be used for shell scripts. You may have a process that a couple shell scripts are useful for, but they can also metastasize to the point where only the original developer (if even) can maintain them.
- goobynight 8y ago
  Exactly. To me, if the sheet is larger than what I can keep on a decent sized screen, it's probably time to move it. Not definitely, but probably.
burtonator 8y ago
I used to hate on spreadsheets because when I was in IT as a kid I had to install Excel and Office and it really sucked back then. I didn't understand why finance liked them so much and I just looked upon finance groups as boring old finance nerds. Man was I wrong... I love Sheets and spreadsheets in general. I've literally spent hours in Sheets running financial analysis of our operational stack and saved thousands and thousands of dollars a month by analyzing our hardware spend.
davemp 8y ago
My hate for spreadsheets come from working in institutions that copy/paste around hideous VBA infested sheets for metrics/reporting instead of using a database. There is a lot of painful excel abuse in business.
- alexhutcheson 8y ago
  Most of the time that happens because the internal tools/databases built or maintained by IT are unusable or just don't do the necessary reporting. Most companies don't have in-house dev teams that are capable of building usable business-relevant tools.
closeparen 8y ago
Shell is a great way to think about it: bash scripts mutating flat files can be reasonable for a personal adhoc task, and maybe even share for reusability, but you don’t want to find them at the core of a backend architecture where an RDBMS ought to be.
ozzyman700 8y ago
They should be treated like jupytr notebooks, used for exploration but productionalizing excel workflows is not fun at all especially if people have gotten into the ActiveX/VBA control stuff. Similar to MS Access or other low code environments, it is great until it is absolutely unacceptable due to system limitations.

by mises 8y ago

I wish spreadsheets didn't get as much unnecessary hate as they do. They are a pretty great tool, and can do almost anything. They are to finance/accounting guys as shells are to many of us.

SquishyPanda23 8y ago

Finance guys and gals have shells like R or Python. Spreadsheets are GUIs for people who prefer that to shells.

mises 8y ago
Don't kid yourself, most finance guys still use Excel. Maybe a few younger ones in the valley use tools like R, Python, etc. but not in most places.
- SquishyPanda23 8y ago
  > Don't kid yourself, most finance guys still use Excel. I didn't say anything about that. You said spreadsheets are like shells for finance people. I was just pointing out that shells for finance people exist and that most prefer not to use them.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

I don't think they get unnecessary hate, it's just that they have a tendency to grow in complexity to the point where a spreadsheet is no longer the right job but is still in use. I don't think it happens as much any more but the same analogy could be used for shell scripts. You may have a process that a couple shell scripts are useful for, but they can also metastasize to the point where only the original developer (if even) can maintain them.

goobynight 8y ago
Exactly. To me, if the sheet is larger than what I can keep on a decent sized screen, it's probably time to move it. Not definitely, but probably.

burtonator 8y ago

I used to hate on spreadsheets because when I was in IT as a kid I had to install Excel and Office and it really sucked back then. I didn't understand why finance liked them so much and I just looked upon finance groups as boring old finance nerds. Man was I wrong... I love Sheets and spreadsheets in general. I've literally spent hours in Sheets running financial analysis of our operational stack and saved thousands and thousands of dollars a month by analyzing our hardware spend.

davemp 8y ago

My hate for spreadsheets come from working in institutions that copy/paste around hideous VBA infested sheets for metrics/reporting instead of using a database. There is a lot of painful excel abuse in business.

alexhutcheson 8y ago
Most of the time that happens because the internal tools/databases built or maintained by IT are unusable or just don't do the necessary reporting. Most companies don't have in-house dev teams that are capable of building usable business-relevant tools.

closeparen 8y ago

Shell is a great way to think about it: bash scripts mutating flat files can be reasonable for a personal adhoc task, and maybe even share for reusability, but you don’t want to find them at the core of a backend architecture where an RDBMS ought to be.

ozzyman700 8y ago

They should be treated like jupytr notebooks, used for exploration but productionalizing excel workflows is not fun at all especially if people have gotten into the ActiveX/VBA control stuff. Similar to MS Access or other low code environments, it is great until it is absolutely unacceptable due to system limitations.