10 ms·

Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

96 points by yarapavan 6y ago

cm2187 6y ago
Time flies when you hibernate
yssrn 6y ago
https://twitter.com/badnetworker/status/1311440209326866432 https://twitter.com/badnetworker/status/1311440209326866432
- M4v3R 6y ago
  yeah they're in on this joke: https://twitter.com/msexcel/status/1311497468559974400 https://twitter.com/msexcel/status/1311497468559974400
sys_64738 6y ago
It seems longer.
Someone1234 6y ago
Excel remains one of my most used pieces of software, and one where I feel like any education/training has re-paid for itself multiple times over. The more you learn, the more productive you are (and sometimes more informed, thanks to data visualizations). OneNote (desktop) and Excel are the only two pieces of Microsoft Office that I regularly continue to use. They're the only reason I license it. Microsoft Word after I graduated rarely gets used (typesetting? I don't even print!), and while I understand the value of Microsoft Access, I feel like using it is investing effort into a dead-end (i.e. people want online/real-time reports, not locked into a desktop software). PowerPoint, at least where I work, is almost a meme (as in "Power Point meeting" is a pejorative implies waste of time meeting). As to Excel: Hopefully it won't take another 35 years for them to fix CSV opening so it doesn't auto-format long numbers into scientific notion or dates, then cause unrecoverable data loss when you save. If you don't know what the data format is DON'T GUESS!
- xnx 6y ago
  > As to Excel: Hopefully it won't take another 35 years for them to fix CSV opening so it doesn't auto-format long numbers into scientific notion or dates, then cause unrecoverable data loss when you save. If you don't know what the data format is DON'T GUESS! Amen! Also removing the leading zeros from US ZIP codes.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Would also say corrupting gene names, but in this case the scientists literally decided to rename genes to not conflict with Excel's treatment of date-like strings.
- hateful 6y ago
  My first job in 2000 was converting files from the "PC" so they can be used on the Mainframe - and this was one of our biggest issues. Some things never change. Used to rename csv files to anything but csv to import them so you'd get the wizard. Hey, but luckily they removed the import option recently! /sarcasm
- markus92 6y ago
  Also stop using locale settings for importing CSVs, or at least make a setting for it. I had to change my PC's locale to English (US) just to decently import CSV files in Excel
- amichal 6y ago
  i recently got burned because at some point in the last few years Excel decided it would be better if it attempted to use localized thousands and decimal separators. item,cost,currency "Socks",1.234,USD Represents socks costing about a dollar in countries that use '.' as a decimal (most) and about a thousand dollars in countries that use a ','. In locales using a decimal period '.' double clicking will open the CSV just fine. In locales using a ',' it comes in as text but the default settings for text to columns use localized number parsing but still let you choose a now ambiguous comma as a column separator. I'm 99% sure it didn't used to do this as we've been making CSVs for the same clients in the same regions (Netherlands) for years and only more recently have they had this trouble. Edit: I've used Excel for at least 20yrs. I thought i new how to use it and how to search it's docs. This is the only article I've found online that mentions how to handle this as a end user. Near the bottom under "Converting International Number Formats" where it of course assumes you have decimal comma and need a decimal period. https://www.howtogeek.com/407217/how-to-use-text-to-columns-like-an-excel-pro/ https://www.howtogeek.com/407217/how-to-use-text-to-columns-... I did also find a 20 minute youtube eventually
mikece 6y ago
The most proper way to celebrate this milestone is to publish a memo that was written in Excel itself.
contradictioned 6y ago
Excel is the "database scripting language" as I like to call it. Very flexible, just do what you want and see a quick result.
- Nullabillity 6y ago
  Surely that would be.. SQL?
  - contradictioned 6y ago
    SQL is then the programming language. I am aware that this differentiation is outdated; but if one sees a scripting language as something to write a small, self-contained job and a programming language something bigger more thought through and interoperable, (and with a fair bit of hand waving), I think that analogy fits. Of course here we do not only have a program but tabular data and operations on them.
jdsully 6y ago
The team behind Excel is top notch. I learned so much from my boss and coworkers during my time there.
protomyth 6y ago
"All the logic for our process is in these Excel Spreadsheets." I love Excel, and I hate Excel. I think it is one of the most interesting tools since HyperCard for the non-programmer. I just wish there was a bit more structure. I would love something more like a Lego set.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Happy Birthday, Excel! You'll be recorded in history books. There's hardly any other software that had such direct impact - both positive and negative - on the day-to-day work of most people on the planet.
piokoch 6y ago
And a little candle for Lotus 1-2-3, grand predecessor of Excel, killed by bad design and management decisions.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- taxcoder 6y ago
  > killed by bad design Are you thinking of 12/31/1899, perhaps?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ThisIsTheWay 6y ago
Heavy use of Excel has literally changed the way I think, and it's what piqued my interest in learning how to program. Using macros was cool, but being able to record and see your actions "transcribed" to visual basic code was pure magic. Excel will always be one of my favorite bits of software.
excelForever 6y ago
I mainly develop with C# but still use Excel to quickly build classes and SQL queries to split out the fieldnames and data types and substitute with requirements Most used VBA function: Function SP(s,d,i) as string SP = split(s,d)(i) end function
aaron695 6y ago
If you want an example of how as a programmer you can actually change the world for the better, this is it. Spreadsheets are also one of the only computer inventions post 80's (79 to be accurate) everything else was pretty much invented before the 80's.
yarapavan 6y ago
For those who are interested in the history of Excel, this visual gallery website shows the evolution from the beginning to present day. https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/microsoft-excel https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/microsoft-excel
stanrivers 6y ago
You know, being controversial here and coming from a finance perspective, I've wondered if Excel has done more harm than good to the finance / M&A / investing industries. Endless iterations, countless different scenarios, simulations of whatever what-if analysis you can think of, exact numbers to 10 decimal places... it all creates the perception of critical thinking and useful work. Often, again in finance and investing, these things are actually only a way to make you feel like you did something useful. It is easy to do these things in excel - and you can show the numbers and the outputs that support all the "hard work" you did. However, at the end of the day they are just numbers in a spreadsheet that you can make do whatever you want. Critical thinking about investment rationale is lost, because it is hard and doesn't look robust because it is just words, and mindless number crunching is preferred because it is easy and looks robust.
- short_sells_poo 6y ago
  I don't know who or why is downvoting you. You are advancing a perfectly rational discussion and shame on anyone who just disagrees by downvote. What you describe is an easy trap to fall into, doubly so in a world of imperfect and insufficient data like finance. You very rarely know the full picture and everything you work with is basically stochastic. Yet this stochastic nature can be easily hidden behind copious numbers that seem to add up. However, I'd like to avoid blaming the tool for this. Just as a hammer cannot be blamed just because it enables plenty of "craftsmen" to cobble together rubbish constructions. Excel is an incredible enabler, and unfortunately it is indiscriminate in that it also enables people to do the wrong thing. The solution here is education I feel. There's also a flipside I often encounter by the way: analysis paralysis. Data analysis - whether we talk about sexy data science with python, Julia, etc on huge cloud server clusters, or good old boring pivot tables in excel - means that a lot of stuff can now be analyzed in minute detail. I've seen so many efforts get bogged down in a depth first search of fractal-like problems because one can find new and surprising things no matter how deep they dig. Again I think the issue is not the tools, but the practitioners who still have plenty of learning to do in producing concise results that are easy to digest. I consider this a form of art.
  - 6y ago
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
The best Eve Online emulator
- Macha 6y ago
  I saw one of the streamers I followed was playing Eve Online and went to check it out, to be greeted with a stream of Excel (for Eve Online manufacturing purposes). I had to take a screenshot.
- fogihujy 6y ago
  Classic joke, and even for the non-initiated, the stuff Eve players do with Excel sheets is usually quite mind-blowing.
thedudeabides5 6y ago
Pour one out for Visicalc, the precursor to Excel/Lotus and the 'killer app' of 1979 for the Apple II! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc Flash forward to 1997, and a key part of the deal for MS investing in Apple is...you guessed it, Excel on the mac. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY&t=2m0s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY&t=2m0s Funny to think about next time some engineer is telling you how this or that new cloud software will 'totally replace spreadsheets.' Spreadsheets powered the personal computing revolution - single handedly determined the winner of the OS wars (when people fled to first DOS and then windows after MSFT build Lotus into Excel). Like em or hate em, spreadsheets are here to stay.
- fulafel 6y ago
  > Like em or hate em, spreadsheets are here to stay. Bold predicion!
- davidwihl 6y ago
  I’ve seen Dan Bricklin in the local Whole Foods on several occasions. I want to yell out: “see that guy! He changed the world!” but then I let him pick an avocado in peace.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  the infamous talk.. what a special spot on the timeline of mainstream tech
- mmphosis 6y ago
  Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.05 (to synchronize with the Macintosh version 2.2) in November 1987. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Early_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Early_history I remember there being dozens of different spreadsheet programs in the 1980's. Flash forward to 2020, and there is primarily Microsoft Excel, it's imitation LibreOffice Calc, Apple Numbers, and Google Sheets.
dartharva 6y ago
I wish Excel used newer, easier programming languages like Python for scripting and macros. I don't like learning an entirely new programming language just to make use of one software feature.
- fortran77 6y ago
  Why Python? It's 2020. It should be Rust.
  - myself248 6y ago
    That's the thing, if they change it to the language du jour every jour, it wouldn't be a stable environment. As it is right now, business logic implemented in Excel executes on a more stable platform than business logic implemented on Windows itself. A spreadsheet from the Windows 3 era will load and calculate without modification, a Win16 binary won't.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    Given your handle I would've expected you to prefer Fortran.
- virgulino 6y ago
  You can program MS Office in Python. And Lua, and Ruby, and Fortran, and others, and mix'em all in a single spreadsheet. That's the beauty of Active Scripting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Scripting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Scripting
- pillefitz 6y ago
  Learning VBA will take you 2hrs or so, and it's amazingly performant!
neovive 6y ago
I'm consistently amazed at the ubiquity and versatility of spreadsheets in both small and large businesses. What other no/low-code tool can be shaped into solutions for finance, accounting, project management, event planning, scheduling, data collection, etc.? The concept of rows+columns+cells is powerful, flexible and easy to understand; when combined with formatting, fills and functions the possibilities are endless.
- Banana699 6y ago
  The interesting thing is that rows and columns wasn't the groundbreaking concept that energized Bricklin to implement it, the fundamental novelty is the automatic recalculation feature. The origin story of how visicalc first formed in his mind is varied, but every version the fundamental insight is that you write expressions symbolically and the computer substitutes so when you change the value of the symbols the computer automatically recalculates. The idea of a grid came to him when he was implementing and had to define the way you reference values symbolically in your expressions, it's not a problem in traditional programming because we have variables and functions and objects and a metric ton load of other named abstractions, but he wanted a GUI. At first he experimented with arrows but the graph very quickly became too unwieldy, then he hit upon the idea of a grid to address and reference values as will as display them. Basically a two dimensional computer memory where the addresses is the (row, col) pair. Simple yet elegant.
  - aksss 6y ago
    Tabulating data in rows and columns goes back to some of our earliest examples of cuneiform writing, I believe. I always assumed the grid of rows and columns was simply modeling the world as tabulators knew it rather than coming up with a new concept for how to present information. That particular presentation is easy for users to understand because it’s been with us forever.
Anon4Now 6y ago
Sad to see they're leaving the Excel add-in development scene behind with .NET 5. VBA is cross platform (PC/Mac) but ugly, old, and very limited. They've hinted at Python scripting support for years, but have never done anything. And now they say they'll focus their future efforts on web add-ins, but from what I've seen web add-ins have been limited to read-only and embedded external content. Plus, most people I know still prefer the desktop version.
fredsted 6y ago
A little off-topic, but maybe someone can answer this. I sometimes use Excel when I want to see a CSV file formatted nicely, but apparently Excel has bad support for CSV files, opening them unparsed (e.g. each line of the CSV taking up a single cell.) Apparently you have to use the "Import CSV" wizard. When building apps that export CSVs, many times customers have had issues with special characters appearing weirdly, so I've needed to format the files using some sort of DOS character set. Apple Numbers and Quick Look opens CSV files without any issues whatsoever. Why is CSV support in Excel so poor?
- Someone1234 6y ago
  > Why is CSV support in Excel so poor? CSV isn't a proprietary Microsoft format. In fact worse: It competes with Microsoft's proprietary formats. Microsoft would like everyone to be sending data to one another using xlsx, but not so much that they'll make generation/processing libraries and tooling free cross-platform, just enough to sabotage everything that isn't that. Microsoft made these decisions during their "evil" years, and never back-tracked. So regardless that CSV is used in multiple industries for data exchange (e.g. financial, order/invoicing, scientific, etc) they'll just keep on corrupting them until you use what they want you to use.
- taxcoder 6y ago
  My assumption is that it is a low priority format for MS. Perhaps because it does not further .xls / .xlsx lockin, perhaps because most ordinary users rarely need to open a .csv file.
isenthil 6y ago
Excel is still one of the most popular and used office productivity tool. Happy Birthday Excel :)
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Excel is the world’s most popular programming language, isn’t it?
- pierrexwz 6y ago
  It was my first programming language where I used IF statements
avens19 6y ago
I've always thought that Excel is the greatest piece of software ever written. The ease of entry, the extensibility, the impressive collection of built-in tools/formulas/charts. It gave regular people the ability to do data analysis and in so doing became perhaps the most ubiquitous business tool in the world aside from email. Happy birthday, Excel.
appwiz 6y ago
One of the best Excel tips video I’ve seen is by Joel Spolsky - aptly named “You suck at Excel”. I’ve been an Excel user forever and this video taught me about features that I never knew existed. Have a look: https://youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c https://youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c
- Wistar 6y ago
  Agreed. I learned, and re-learned a lot about Excel from that video.
- mattalbie 6y ago
  That video is required viewing for my team.
- s1mon 6y ago
  Came here to post essentially the same thing. Considering how much of most people's Excel usage (in my work experience) is basically making very simple tables/databases, the stuff in here should be required.
gherkinnn 6y ago
I’m perpetually amazed and sometimes shocked at how much of our world relies on Excel. Being central to developing Excel has to be the safest IT job out there. Half of the world can be on fire and you’re still required.
tmnstr85 6y ago
Excel - the ultimate gateway drug to RDBMS
chaostheory 6y ago
Here's most of the original team and some extras https://theymadethat.com/things/t00/microsoft-excel https://theymadethat.com/things/t00/microsoft-excel
cafard 6y ago
Probably via something posted to HN, I saw somebody's rule that "It doesn't matter what the users say they want, they want Excel." This seems to be the case often.
mceoin 6y ago
Hey HN! We're building a networked spreadsheet to make it easy to connect, sync and query data without needing to know how to code. We're hiring a lead backend developer to join us. JD here: https://sourcetable.com/jobs#backend-engineer https://sourcetable.com/jobs#backend-engineer (I usually wouldn't comment bomb but feels very on-point for this thread as there are plenty of spreadsheet-lovers here.) I can be reached via eoin [at] sourcetable [dot] com
fomine3 6y ago
Use of VBA without improving for 20 years is shame.
DeafSquid 6y ago
This guy made a drum machine in excel https://youtu.be/To2JIXGoYzA https://youtu.be/To2JIXGoYzA

96 points by yarapavan 6y ago

cm2187 6y ago

Time flies when you hibernate

yssrn 6y ago

https://twitter.com/badnetworker/status/1311440209326866432 https://twitter.com/badnetworker/status/1311440209326866432

M4v3R 6y ago
yeah they're in on this joke: https://twitter.com/msexcel/status/1311497468559974400 https://twitter.com/msexcel/status/1311497468559974400

sys_64738 6y ago

It seems longer.

Someone1234 6y ago

Excel remains one of my most used pieces of software, and one where I feel like any education/training has re-paid for itself multiple times over. The more you learn, the more productive you are (and sometimes more informed, thanks to data visualizations). OneNote (desktop) and Excel are the only two pieces of Microsoft Office that I regularly continue to use. They're the only reason I license it. Microsoft Word after I graduated rarely gets used (typesetting? I don't even print!), and while I understand the value of Microsoft Access, I feel like using it is investing effort into a dead-end (i.e. people want online/real-time reports, not locked into a desktop software). PowerPoint, at least where I work, is almost a meme (as in "Power Point meeting" is a pejorative implies waste of time meeting). As to Excel: Hopefully it won't take another 35 years for them to fix CSV opening so it doesn't auto-format long numbers into scientific notion or dates, then cause unrecoverable data loss when you save. If you don't know what the data format is DON'T GUESS!

xnx 6y ago
> As to Excel: Hopefully it won't take another 35 years for them to fix CSV opening so it doesn't auto-format long numbers into scientific notion or dates, then cause unrecoverable data loss when you save. If you don't know what the data format is DON'T GUESS! Amen! Also removing the leading zeros from US ZIP codes.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Would also say corrupting gene names, but in this case the scientists literally decided to rename genes to not conflict with Excel's treatment of date-like strings.
hateful 6y ago
My first job in 2000 was converting files from the "PC" so they can be used on the Mainframe - and this was one of our biggest issues. Some things never change. Used to rename csv files to anything but csv to import them so you'd get the wizard. Hey, but luckily they removed the import option recently! /sarcasm
markus92 6y ago
Also stop using locale settings for importing CSVs, or at least make a setting for it. I had to change my PC's locale to English (US) just to decently import CSV files in Excel
amichal 6y ago
i recently got burned because at some point in the last few years Excel decided it would be better if it attempted to use localized thousands and decimal separators. item,cost,currency "Socks",1.234,USD Represents socks costing about a dollar in countries that use '.' as a decimal (most) and about a thousand dollars in countries that use a ','. In locales using a decimal period '.' double clicking will open the CSV just fine. In locales using a ',' it comes in as text but the default settings for text to columns use localized number parsing but still let you choose a now ambiguous comma as a column separator. I'm 99% sure it didn't used to do this as we've been making CSVs for the same clients in the same regions (Netherlands) for years and only more recently have they had this trouble. Edit: I've used Excel for at least 20yrs. I thought i new how to use it and how to search it's docs. This is the only article I've found online that mentions how to handle this as a end user. Near the bottom under "Converting International Number Formats" where it of course assumes you have decimal comma and need a decimal period. https://www.howtogeek.com/407217/how-to-use-text-to-columns-like-an-excel-pro/ https://www.howtogeek.com/407217/how-to-use-text-to-columns-... I did also find a 20 minute youtube eventually

mikece 6y ago

The most proper way to celebrate this milestone is to publish a memo that was written in Excel itself.

contradictioned 6y ago

Excel is the "database scripting language" as I like to call it. Very flexible, just do what you want and see a quick result.

Nullabillity 6y ago
Surely that would be.. SQL?
- contradictioned 6y ago
  SQL is then the programming language. I am aware that this differentiation is outdated; but if one sees a scripting language as something to write a small, self-contained job and a programming language something bigger more thought through and interoperable, (and with a fair bit of hand waving), I think that analogy fits. Of course here we do not only have a program but tabular data and operations on them.

jdsully 6y ago

The team behind Excel is top notch. I learned so much from my boss and coworkers during my time there.

protomyth 6y ago

"All the logic for our process is in these Excel Spreadsheets." I love Excel, and I hate Excel. I think it is one of the most interesting tools since HyperCard for the non-programmer. I just wish there was a bit more structure. I would love something more like a Lego set.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Happy Birthday, Excel! You'll be recorded in history books. There's hardly any other software that had such direct impact - both positive and negative - on the day-to-day work of most people on the planet.

piokoch 6y ago

And a little candle for Lotus 1-2-3, grand predecessor of Excel, killed by bad design and management decisions.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
taxcoder 6y ago
> killed by bad design Are you thinking of 12/31/1899, perhaps?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ThisIsTheWay 6y ago

Heavy use of Excel has literally changed the way I think, and it's what piqued my interest in learning how to program. Using macros was cool, but being able to record and see your actions "transcribed" to visual basic code was pure magic. Excel will always be one of my favorite bits of software.

excelForever 6y ago

I mainly develop with C# but still use Excel to quickly build classes and SQL queries to split out the fieldnames and data types and substitute with requirements Most used VBA function: Function SP(s,d,i) as string SP = split(s,d)(i) end function

aaron695 6y ago

If you want an example of how as a programmer you can actually change the world for the better, this is it. Spreadsheets are also one of the only computer inventions post 80's (79 to be accurate) everything else was pretty much invented before the 80's.

yarapavan 6y ago

For those who are interested in the history of Excel, this visual gallery website shows the evolution from the beginning to present day. https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/microsoft-excel https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/microsoft-excel

stanrivers 6y ago

You know, being controversial here and coming from a finance perspective, I've wondered if Excel has done more harm than good to the finance / M&A / investing industries. Endless iterations, countless different scenarios, simulations of whatever what-if analysis you can think of, exact numbers to 10 decimal places... it all creates the perception of critical thinking and useful work. Often, again in finance and investing, these things are actually only a way to make you feel like you did something useful. It is easy to do these things in excel - and you can show the numbers and the outputs that support all the "hard work" you did. However, at the end of the day they are just numbers in a spreadsheet that you can make do whatever you want. Critical thinking about investment rationale is lost, because it is hard and doesn't look robust because it is just words, and mindless number crunching is preferred because it is easy and looks robust.

short_sells_poo 6y ago
I don't know who or why is downvoting you. You are advancing a perfectly rational discussion and shame on anyone who just disagrees by downvote. What you describe is an easy trap to fall into, doubly so in a world of imperfect and insufficient data like finance. You very rarely know the full picture and everything you work with is basically stochastic. Yet this stochastic nature can be easily hidden behind copious numbers that seem to add up. However, I'd like to avoid blaming the tool for this. Just as a hammer cannot be blamed just because it enables plenty of "craftsmen" to cobble together rubbish constructions. Excel is an incredible enabler, and unfortunately it is indiscriminate in that it also enables people to do the wrong thing. The solution here is education I feel. There's also a flipside I often encounter by the way: analysis paralysis. Data analysis - whether we talk about sexy data science with python, Julia, etc on huge cloud server clusters, or good old boring pivot tables in excel - means that a lot of stuff can now be analyzed in minute detail. I've seen so many efforts get bogged down in a depth first search of fractal-like problems because one can find new and surprising things no matter how deep they dig. Again I think the issue is not the tools, but the practitioners who still have plenty of learning to do in producing concise results that are easy to digest. I consider this a form of art.
- 6y ago

NikolaeVarius 6y ago

The best Eve Online emulator

Macha 6y ago
I saw one of the streamers I followed was playing Eve Online and went to check it out, to be greeted with a stream of Excel (for Eve Online manufacturing purposes). I had to take a screenshot.
fogihujy 6y ago
Classic joke, and even for the non-initiated, the stuff Eve players do with Excel sheets is usually quite mind-blowing.

thedudeabides5 6y ago

Pour one out for Visicalc, the precursor to Excel/Lotus and the 'killer app' of 1979 for the Apple II! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc Flash forward to 1997, and a key part of the deal for MS investing in Apple is...you guessed it, Excel on the mac. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY&t=2m0s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY&t=2m0s Funny to think about next time some engineer is telling you how this or that new cloud software will 'totally replace spreadsheets.' Spreadsheets powered the personal computing revolution - single handedly determined the winner of the OS wars (when people fled to first DOS and then windows after MSFT build Lotus into Excel). Like em or hate em, spreadsheets are here to stay.

fulafel 6y ago
> Like em or hate em, spreadsheets are here to stay. Bold predicion!
davidwihl 6y ago
I’ve seen Dan Bricklin in the local Whole Foods on several occasions. I want to yell out: “see that guy! He changed the world!” but then I let him pick an avocado in peace.
agumonkey 6y ago
the infamous talk.. what a special spot on the timeline of mainstream tech
mmphosis 6y ago
Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.05 (to synchronize with the Macintosh version 2.2) in November 1987. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Early_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Early_history I remember there being dozens of different spreadsheet programs in the 1980's. Flash forward to 2020, and there is primarily Microsoft Excel, it's imitation LibreOffice Calc, Apple Numbers, and Google Sheets.

dartharva 6y ago

I wish Excel used newer, easier programming languages like Python for scripting and macros. I don't like learning an entirely new programming language just to make use of one software feature.

fortran77 6y ago
Why Python? It's 2020. It should be Rust.
- myself248 6y ago
  That's the thing, if they change it to the language du jour every jour, it wouldn't be a stable environment. As it is right now, business logic implemented in Excel executes on a more stable platform than business logic implemented on Windows itself. A spreadsheet from the Windows 3 era will load and calculate without modification, a Win16 binary won't.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Given your handle I would've expected you to prefer Fortran.
virgulino 6y ago
You can program MS Office in Python. And Lua, and Ruby, and Fortran, and others, and mix'em all in a single spreadsheet. That's the beauty of Active Scripting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Scripting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Scripting
pillefitz 6y ago
Learning VBA will take you 2hrs or so, and it's amazingly performant!

neovive 6y ago

I'm consistently amazed at the ubiquity and versatility of spreadsheets in both small and large businesses. What other no/low-code tool can be shaped into solutions for finance, accounting, project management, event planning, scheduling, data collection, etc.? The concept of rows+columns+cells is powerful, flexible and easy to understand; when combined with formatting, fills and functions the possibilities are endless.

Banana699 6y ago
The interesting thing is that rows and columns wasn't the groundbreaking concept that energized Bricklin to implement it, the fundamental novelty is the automatic recalculation feature. The origin story of how visicalc first formed in his mind is varied, but every version the fundamental insight is that you write expressions symbolically and the computer substitutes so when you change the value of the symbols the computer automatically recalculates. The idea of a grid came to him when he was implementing and had to define the way you reference values symbolically in your expressions, it's not a problem in traditional programming because we have variables and functions and objects and a metric ton load of other named abstractions, but he wanted a GUI. At first he experimented with arrows but the graph very quickly became too unwieldy, then he hit upon the idea of a grid to address and reference values as will as display them. Basically a two dimensional computer memory where the addresses is the (row, col) pair. Simple yet elegant.
- aksss 6y ago
  Tabulating data in rows and columns goes back to some of our earliest examples of cuneiform writing, I believe. I always assumed the grid of rows and columns was simply modeling the world as tabulators knew it rather than coming up with a new concept for how to present information. That particular presentation is easy for users to understand because it’s been with us forever.

Anon4Now 6y ago

Sad to see they're leaving the Excel add-in development scene behind with .NET 5. VBA is cross platform (PC/Mac) but ugly, old, and very limited. They've hinted at Python scripting support for years, but have never done anything. And now they say they'll focus their future efforts on web add-ins, but from what I've seen web add-ins have been limited to read-only and embedded external content. Plus, most people I know still prefer the desktop version.

fredsted 6y ago

A little off-topic, but maybe someone can answer this. I sometimes use Excel when I want to see a CSV file formatted nicely, but apparently Excel has bad support for CSV files, opening them unparsed (e.g. each line of the CSV taking up a single cell.) Apparently you have to use the "Import CSV" wizard. When building apps that export CSVs, many times customers have had issues with special characters appearing weirdly, so I've needed to format the files using some sort of DOS character set. Apple Numbers and Quick Look opens CSV files without any issues whatsoever. Why is CSV support in Excel so poor?

Someone1234 6y ago
> Why is CSV support in Excel so poor? CSV isn't a proprietary Microsoft format. In fact worse: It competes with Microsoft's proprietary formats. Microsoft would like everyone to be sending data to one another using xlsx, but not so much that they'll make generation/processing libraries and tooling free cross-platform, just enough to sabotage everything that isn't that. Microsoft made these decisions during their "evil" years, and never back-tracked. So regardless that CSV is used in multiple industries for data exchange (e.g. financial, order/invoicing, scientific, etc) they'll just keep on corrupting them until you use what they want you to use.
taxcoder 6y ago
My assumption is that it is a low priority format for MS. Perhaps because it does not further .xls / .xlsx lockin, perhaps because most ordinary users rarely need to open a .csv file.

isenthil 6y ago

Excel is still one of the most popular and used office productivity tool. Happy Birthday Excel :)

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Excel is the world’s most popular programming language, isn’t it?

pierrexwz 6y ago
It was my first programming language where I used IF statements

avens19 6y ago

I've always thought that Excel is the greatest piece of software ever written. The ease of entry, the extensibility, the impressive collection of built-in tools/formulas/charts. It gave regular people the ability to do data analysis and in so doing became perhaps the most ubiquitous business tool in the world aside from email. Happy birthday, Excel.

appwiz 6y ago

One of the best Excel tips video I’ve seen is by Joel Spolsky - aptly named “You suck at Excel”. I’ve been an Excel user forever and this video taught me about features that I never knew existed. Have a look: https://youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c https://youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c

Wistar 6y ago
Agreed. I learned, and re-learned a lot about Excel from that video.
mattalbie 6y ago
That video is required viewing for my team.
s1mon 6y ago
Came here to post essentially the same thing. Considering how much of most people's Excel usage (in my work experience) is basically making very simple tables/databases, the stuff in here should be required.

gherkinnn 6y ago

I’m perpetually amazed and sometimes shocked at how much of our world relies on Excel. Being central to developing Excel has to be the safest IT job out there. Half of the world can be on fire and you’re still required.

tmnstr85 6y ago

Excel - the ultimate gateway drug to RDBMS

chaostheory 6y ago

Here's most of the original team and some extras https://theymadethat.com/things/t00/microsoft-excel https://theymadethat.com/things/t00/microsoft-excel

cafard 6y ago

Probably via something posted to HN, I saw somebody's rule that "It doesn't matter what the users say they want, they want Excel." This seems to be the case often.

mceoin 6y ago

Hey HN! We're building a networked spreadsheet to make it easy to connect, sync and query data without needing to know how to code. We're hiring a lead backend developer to join us. JD here: https://sourcetable.com/jobs#backend-engineer https://sourcetable.com/jobs#backend-engineer (I usually wouldn't comment bomb but feels very on-point for this thread as there are plenty of spreadsheet-lovers here.) I can be reached via eoin [at] sourcetable [dot] com

fomine3 6y ago

Use of VBA without improving for 20 years is shame.

DeafSquid 6y ago

This guy made a drum machine in excel https://youtu.be/To2JIXGoYzA https://youtu.be/To2JIXGoYzA