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They are costing money. No doubt. At the same time, the business world runs on Excel. How much money is Excel making? I've done my share of cursing at Excel a

They are costing money. No doubt. At the same time, the business world runs on Excel. How much money is Excel making? I've done my share of cursing at Excel at various jobs. At the same time, I am grateful for the quick and easy way it allows me and many others to manipulate data. It's unfair to just cite the costs of using Excel without acknowledging the benefits it brings.

collyw 6y ago
The real question should be would it be cheaper to replace it with a proper solution (probably something custom built application written by a software engineer). Excel's ease of use is it's downfall. It is the worlds most popular database, despite not actually being a database. I have wasted countless hours dealing with Excel where something else should have been used. I built a database for a friend recently, I think 75% of the work was cleaning the existing data from the excel to get it into the database.
- tiernano 6y ago
  it will only be cheaper after the company loses money... no business person ever looked at something and said "it works, but it might not, some day... better spend $XXX,XXX on an engineer to fix the problem".
  - bregma 6y ago
    You have just identified the new market of Spreadsheet Insurance. I am thinking it could be quite lucrative if you get the right salespeople in on the ground floor. I'm willing to bet no funding source is unfamiliar with the demand for this product.
- Closi 6y ago
  The problem with a database is that business users struggle to build them, they take longer, and sometimes can’t hold logic in the same way. Plus in a database you can’t do the same sort of real-time analysis and also pass the document around for other non-technical folk to add to and modify. In the real world in big companies, people often don’t want to talk to IT because they over-spec and quote what are perceived to be giant sums of money for something that can be created in an hour in excel.
  - Closi 6y ago
    To add to this point, the latest article says that they started building a replacement to the spreadsheet two months ago, so I think that reinforces the speed of a spreadsheet implementation vs anything else in the public sector!
    - wbl 6y ago
      You might not have realized this but they should have started work in January.
      - Closi 6y ago
        You might not have realized this, but a global pandemic was starting in January and they were probably collectively shitting bricks at that point trying to shoe-string together something to help capture reporting, while probably being in a change freeze, and also probably having to do a mass-migration to at home work with the inevitable struggles of that.
- dageshi 6y ago
  People start using excel when the requirements are unknown, they use excel to understand the requirements while still being functional. To build a "proper solution", you frontload all the requirement discovery to build a system which only you or another developer will be able to update/change. We blame excel, but excel is really just being used for prototyping and nobody takes a decision at a certain point to move on from that prototype.
  - collyw 6y ago
    I would say that people use Excel because they don't understand how to set up a relational database. It's usually non-technical users that set up Excel, then at a later stage I get asked to create a proper database from it.
    - jasode 6y ago
      >I would say that people use Excel because they don't understand how to set up a relational database. It's usually non-technical users that set up Excel, I disagree that lack of db knowledge is the primary reason. I'm a programmer and I usually use MS Excel because it's easier than relational databases. I prefer Excel even though my skillset includes: + Oracle DBA certification and working as a real db administrator for 2 years + MySQL and MS SQL Server programming with raw "INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE" or with ORMs + SQLite and programming with its API in C/C++/C# + MS Access databases and writing VB for enterprises The problem is none of the above databases (except for MSAccess) come with a GUI datagridview for easy inputting data, sorting columns, coloring cells, printing reports, etc. Yes, there are some GUI tools such as SQLyog, Jetbrains DataGrip, Navicat, etc... but none of those have the flexibility and power of Excel. Yes, a GUI frontend to interact with backend databases can be built and to that point, I also have in my skillset: Qt with C++ and Windows Forms with C#. But my GUI programming skills also don't matter because for most data analysis tasks, I just use Excel if it's less than a million rows. Databases have a higher level of friction and all of my advanced skills don't really change that. Starting MS Excel with a blank worksheet and start typing immediately into cell A1 is always faster than spinning up a db instance and entering SQL "CREATE TABLE xyz (...);" commands. Of course, if it's a mission-critical enterprise program, I'll recommend and code a "real" app with a relational database. However, the threshold for that has to be really high. This is why no corporate IT department can develop "real database apps" as fast as Excel users can create adhoc spreadsheets. (My previous comment about that phenomenon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756400)
- altacc 6y ago
  I find people often use Excel (or Access if they're brave) when they have a known problem and can visualise the solution in something they know, like Excel. The crucial factor is implementation time. They can open an Excel and start work immediately, or wait weeks or months going through a lengthy and complex IT procurement process that will take from their budget. So in most cases starting with Excel is a no-brainer. Same reason why a lot of stealth IT gets implemented. It's often only after years of a business using what has become sacred & business critical Excels, that somebody suggests formalizing it into software. In a business with an IT function, or a consultancy looking for business, it should always be somebody's job to find these Excels and replace them with something more robust.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    > Same reason why a lot of stealth IT gets implemented. Honestly, I miss the days of writing VBA macros which save hours of work a week and being sneered at by the 'official IT'. I worked in a team in a large commercial bank handling reconciliations with various funds. Some of which had to be contacted by phone to confirm the current holdings. We had a system which would import our current positions and take imports in various formats from funds. Somewhere around 40% of the differences where due to trades which had been executed over the reconciliation date. I wrote a VBA script which pulled in all of the differences and identified trades which where open over the period and automatically closed the discrepancy with a reference to the trade IDs. Another time I wrote a VBA script which would take a case ID and look it up in a diary system (at the time the only way I found to do this was to use the Win32 APIs and manually parse the fields in the HTML from the system), it would then enter this at the top of a spreadsheet which had to be completed. People liked it so much I had to rewrite it so that it would work on a list of case IDs and automatically print out the checklist. Much more fun than figuring out why Kubernetes is doing something weird for the 3rd time this week.
- kabes 6y ago
  No, because the proper solution written by a software engineer will contain more bugs.
- carlmr 6y ago
  >It is the worlds most popular database, despite not actually being a database. "A database is an organized collection of data, generally stored and accessed electronically from a computer system."[1] Excel is an organized collection of data, stored and accessed electronically from a computer system. So I would call it a database. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database
  - Isthatablackgsd 6y ago
    Excel is not a database, it is a spreadsheet. They are different beasts. This link will explain the difference between two of them. https://365datascience.com/explainer-video/database-vs-spreadsheet/ https://365datascience.com/explainer-video/database-vs-sprea...
    - carlmr 6y ago
      What i was getting at is that it fulfills the (very) basic definition of a database, even though it's very bad for this purpose.

collyw 6y ago

The real question should be would it be cheaper to replace it with a proper solution (probably something custom built application written by a software engineer). Excel's ease of use is it's downfall. It is the worlds most popular database, despite not actually being a database. I have wasted countless hours dealing with Excel where something else should have been used. I built a database for a friend recently, I think 75% of the work was cleaning the existing data from the excel to get it into the database.

tiernano 6y ago
it will only be cheaper after the company loses money... no business person ever looked at something and said "it works, but it might not, some day... better spend $XXX,XXX on an engineer to fix the problem".
- bregma 6y ago
  You have just identified the new market of Spreadsheet Insurance. I am thinking it could be quite lucrative if you get the right salespeople in on the ground floor. I'm willing to bet no funding source is unfamiliar with the demand for this product.
Closi 6y ago
The problem with a database is that business users struggle to build them, they take longer, and sometimes can’t hold logic in the same way. Plus in a database you can’t do the same sort of real-time analysis and also pass the document around for other non-technical folk to add to and modify. In the real world in big companies, people often don’t want to talk to IT because they over-spec and quote what are perceived to be giant sums of money for something that can be created in an hour in excel.
- Closi 6y ago
  To add to this point, the latest article says that they started building a replacement to the spreadsheet two months ago, so I think that reinforces the speed of a spreadsheet implementation vs anything else in the public sector!
  - wbl 6y ago
    You might not have realized this but they should have started work in January.
    - Closi 6y ago
      You might not have realized this, but a global pandemic was starting in January and they were probably collectively shitting bricks at that point trying to shoe-string together something to help capture reporting, while probably being in a change freeze, and also probably having to do a mass-migration to at home work with the inevitable struggles of that.
dageshi 6y ago
People start using excel when the requirements are unknown, they use excel to understand the requirements while still being functional. To build a "proper solution", you frontload all the requirement discovery to build a system which only you or another developer will be able to update/change. We blame excel, but excel is really just being used for prototyping and nobody takes a decision at a certain point to move on from that prototype.
- collyw 6y ago
  I would say that people use Excel because they don't understand how to set up a relational database. It's usually non-technical users that set up Excel, then at a later stage I get asked to create a proper database from it.
  - jasode 6y ago
    >I would say that people use Excel because they don't understand how to set up a relational database. It's usually non-technical users that set up Excel, I disagree that lack of db knowledge is the primary reason. I'm a programmer and I usually use MS Excel because it's easier than relational databases. I prefer Excel even though my skillset includes: + Oracle DBA certification and working as a real db administrator for 2 years + MySQL and MS SQL Server programming with raw "INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE" or with ORMs + SQLite and programming with its API in C/C++/C# + MS Access databases and writing VB for enterprises The problem is none of the above databases (except for MSAccess) come with a GUI datagridview for easy inputting data, sorting columns, coloring cells, printing reports, etc. Yes, there are some GUI tools such as SQLyog, Jetbrains DataGrip, Navicat, etc... but none of those have the flexibility and power of Excel. Yes, a GUI frontend to interact with backend databases can be built and to that point, I also have in my skillset: Qt with C++ and Windows Forms with C#. But my GUI programming skills also don't matter because for most data analysis tasks, I just use Excel if it's less than a million rows. Databases have a higher level of friction and all of my advanced skills don't really change that. Starting MS Excel with a blank worksheet and start typing immediately into cell A1 is always faster than spinning up a db instance and entering SQL "CREATE TABLE xyz (...);" commands. Of course, if it's a mission-critical enterprise program, I'll recommend and code a "real" app with a relational database. However, the threshold for that has to be really high. This is why no corporate IT department can develop "real database apps" as fast as Excel users can create adhoc spreadsheets. (My previous comment about that phenomenon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756400)
altacc 6y ago
I find people often use Excel (or Access if they're brave) when they have a known problem and can visualise the solution in something they know, like Excel. The crucial factor is implementation time. They can open an Excel and start work immediately, or wait weeks or months going through a lengthy and complex IT procurement process that will take from their budget. So in most cases starting with Excel is a no-brainer. Same reason why a lot of stealth IT gets implemented. It's often only after years of a business using what has become sacred & business critical Excels, that somebody suggests formalizing it into software. In a business with an IT function, or a consultancy looking for business, it should always be somebody's job to find these Excels and replace them with something more robust.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  > Same reason why a lot of stealth IT gets implemented. Honestly, I miss the days of writing VBA macros which save hours of work a week and being sneered at by the 'official IT'. I worked in a team in a large commercial bank handling reconciliations with various funds. Some of which had to be contacted by phone to confirm the current holdings. We had a system which would import our current positions and take imports in various formats from funds. Somewhere around 40% of the differences where due to trades which had been executed over the reconciliation date. I wrote a VBA script which pulled in all of the differences and identified trades which where open over the period and automatically closed the discrepancy with a reference to the trade IDs. Another time I wrote a VBA script which would take a case ID and look it up in a diary system (at the time the only way I found to do this was to use the Win32 APIs and manually parse the fields in the HTML from the system), it would then enter this at the top of a spreadsheet which had to be completed. People liked it so much I had to rewrite it so that it would work on a list of case IDs and automatically print out the checklist. Much more fun than figuring out why Kubernetes is doing something weird for the 3rd time this week.
kabes 6y ago
No, because the proper solution written by a software engineer will contain more bugs.
carlmr 6y ago
>It is the worlds most popular database, despite not actually being a database. "A database is an organized collection of data, generally stored and accessed electronically from a computer system."[1] Excel is an organized collection of data, stored and accessed electronically from a computer system. So I would call it a database. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database
- Isthatablackgsd 6y ago
  Excel is not a database, it is a spreadsheet. They are different beasts. This link will explain the difference between two of them. https://365datascience.com/explainer-video/database-vs-spreadsheet/ https://365datascience.com/explainer-video/database-vs-sprea...
  - carlmr 6y ago
    What i was getting at is that it fulfills the (very) basic definition of a database, even though it's very bad for this purpose.