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And for why that's important: business teams who generate business-critical Excel sheets never got the memo about good ideas from the software development lifec
by ethbro 7y ago
And for why that's important: business teams who generate business-critical Excel sheets never got the memo about good ideas from the software development lifecycle. And have been cobbling together undocumented tools to get work done for decades.
Dealing with this at work now.
And it's not like they're disinterested or incapable of learning, literally no one thought "Gee, what those folks are doing looks a lot like code."
The biggest boost to interop would be requiring software vendors to release spec sheets for necessary software components and file formats... if they want government work. No more "It's too hard" or "We can't." You want the job, those are the rules.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> business teams who generate business-critical Excel sheets never got the memo about good ideas from the software development lifecycle. And have been cobbling together undocumented tools to get work done for decades. So, business teams invented the all-too-common version of agile development even before “real” software developers, without the disadvantage of ignorance of the body of knowledge around the SDLC, got around to it.
- nradov 7y agoThe Excel file format has been a publicly released open standard for years.
- loup-vaillant 7y agoThere's a document that ostensibly describes the format, but I'm not aware of a free software reference implementation. Their format may be open in theory, but in practice Microsoft still takes advantage of vendor lock in.