4 ms·

The issue with is excel is that its failure mode is suboptimal. Programming languages will generally crash at runtime when an unrecoverable error occurs (inde

The issue with is excel is that its failure mode is suboptimal. Programming languages will generally crash at runtime when an unrecoverable error occurs (index out of bounds, memory allocation failed, null pointer, etc). But excel just throws away your data?

tomc1985 6y ago
Indeed, you have to manually inspect results to verify correctness. If you're lucky maybe your error will result in one of those weird error values being shown instead, but way too often that is not the case Not to mention that complex formulae are still usually expressed as a bunch of gobbledygook in the cell value textbox, which is about as easy to parse as minified Javascript. And that's to technical users like ourselves.
- logicOnly 6y ago
  I had Excel error out when I tried to open 10 million rows.
  - sueders101 6y ago
    Excel tops out a little more over a million rows without specifically handling of larger files. I’m not sure excusing it, just a heads up to all the junior analysts out there who haven’t dealt with the problem(not implying you’re a junior analyst, just wanted to point something out to those who aren’t familiar with the issue).
    - logicOnly 6y ago
      No worries, Excel is nice for small/medium sized data and has the UI/Visualization which is nice. The story I mentioned was because I wanted to look at the data before I started parsing it. I had full expectations to use either sqlite or Pandas.
curiousllama 6y ago
If it fails, it’s often silent. If not silent, hidden. If not hidden, misleading, if not misleading, opaque. If not opaque, trivial. Excel is a wonderfully powerful tool that’s very bad at handling errors clearly.
- lbruder 6y ago
  It's the PHP of business software. Powers half the market, but boy do mistakes cost you.
Closi 6y ago
In this case, Excel throws an error and says that not all rows have been loaded. It seems that warning has just been ignored by the user.
hurrrrrrrr 6y ago
> Programming languages will generally crash at runtime when an unrecoverable error occurs (index out of bounds, memory allocation failed, null pointer, etc). JS would like to have a word with you.

tomc1985 6y ago

Indeed, you have to manually inspect results to verify correctness. If you're lucky maybe your error will result in one of those weird error values being shown instead, but way too often that is not the case Not to mention that complex formulae are still usually expressed as a bunch of gobbledygook in the cell value textbox, which is about as easy to parse as minified Javascript. And that's to technical users like ourselves.

logicOnly 6y ago
I had Excel error out when I tried to open 10 million rows.
- sueders101 6y ago
  Excel tops out a little more over a million rows without specifically handling of larger files. I’m not sure excusing it, just a heads up to all the junior analysts out there who haven’t dealt with the problem(not implying you’re a junior analyst, just wanted to point something out to those who aren’t familiar with the issue).
  - logicOnly 6y ago
    No worries, Excel is nice for small/medium sized data and has the UI/Visualization which is nice. The story I mentioned was because I wanted to look at the data before I started parsing it. I had full expectations to use either sqlite or Pandas.

curiousllama 6y ago

If it fails, it’s often silent. If not silent, hidden. If not hidden, misleading, if not misleading, opaque. If not opaque, trivial. Excel is a wonderfully powerful tool that’s very bad at handling errors clearly.

lbruder 6y ago
It's the PHP of business software. Powers half the market, but boy do mistakes cost you.

Closi 6y ago

In this case, Excel throws an error and says that not all rows have been loaded. It seems that warning has just been ignored by the user.

hurrrrrrrr 6y ago

> Programming languages will generally crash at runtime when an unrecoverable error occurs (index out of bounds, memory allocation failed, null pointer, etc). JS would like to have a word with you.