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Spreadsheets, as they incarnated in Excel are akin to running old style no-named-subroutines, only-two-chars-per-variable-name, goto-line-number BASIC but on mo
by codesnik 6y ago
Spreadsheets, as they incarnated in Excel are akin to running old style no-named-subroutines, only-two-chars-per-variable-name, goto-line-number BASIC but on modern hardware.
Ideas that could potentially grow into something safe and powerful cannot grow now because of market dominance of that outdated monster.
And I keep hearing the same arguments, like "it can be used without knowing how to program" - but have you actually seen those formulas they enter? How exactly it differs in complexity from, say, SQL? At least in SQL you'll have sanely named columns and can actually see logic, reading it a month later.
Mixing datasets and freeform reports in the same sheets is a design mistake.
Having auto-conversion for data is a design mistake.
Not having enforced row/column sets instead of just typing any formula anywere is a design mistake.
All that leads to millions of wasted hours of human life just looking closely on rows and rows of numbers with squinted eyes, trying to figure where accidental keystroke had broken your data.
I really liked how MacOS Numbers approached spreadsheets, before they were somewhat butchered for ipads and excel compatibility: spreadsheets were not "infinite", separating concept of tables from concept of pages; column and row headers automatically used as names in formulas instead of undescriptive A1:B2 format, making them actually readable.
Unfortunately it was also slow as hell.
Airtable is a good direction for data entry purposes by multiple people, unfortunately it's no good for even medium sized tables, and exporting is limited.
- pfundstein 6y agoTables are, of course, an excellent way of organizing data. Now add in the easy point and click UI and simple formulas to get you hooked, and soon you find yourself deep in VLOOKUPS and macros with no way back. Excel eases you into data organisation and manipulation. Many tools are better for any given task, but Excel excels at generalising.
- SavantIdiot 6y agoI taught an engineer how to do 2D iterative scenarios with TABLE(), and his XLS files began taking 30+ minutes to open. Every XLS ended with "-DANGERTABLES.xls" to remind us not to accidentally click it and kill our machines. [For those who don't know, it's basically a way to reduce a massively interconnected spreadsheet (dozens of sheets) as f(x,y)=z, and then make hundreds of tables built with that function. Insanely powerful, but causes spreadsheets to grind to halt every time you touch a cell (unless you turn off auto computation).]
- codesnik 6y agoThe fact that vlookup with all its usability, pitfalls and speed is still the main way to relate data in excel basically proves my point.
- alexslobodnik 6y agoExcel is faster to get off the ground. You can get a initial feel for a data set in excel far faster than in Python of SQL. I grant that may be the practitioners limitations than the software.
- MikusR 6y agoExcel has named ranges. You can name any single cell, row, column, 2d array.
- codesnik 6y agoBut they're pain in the ass to use, modify, and really feel as an afterthought which barely used by anyone. Compare this to "Numbers": you just enter any text int row or column header and this text is immediately usable and visible as a range specifier in formulas. How intuitive is that? Also excel has (inner) tables inside of tables, with more restrictions that. Also excel even has SQL-dialect for querying columns. That's not important, important are defaults, and how your simple spreadsheet you can fit into a screen is going to evolve. Excel makes it VERY hard to not make a mess, even if you have time to learn it.
- rvba 6y agoYou talk about SQL being great, yet you probably never had to download data from tables where the headers are German abbreviations, or gibberish due to 8 character limit in 1985.
- codesnik 6y agoSQL is greatER than excel's default mode of addressing data. As russian, I've worked with a very diverse data sources in different encodings during my career, fair amount of broken CSV's, xml's, etc, cleanups, joins, sqlite processing etc. And yes, many, many excel files used as a poor man's data entry software to cleanup. No german abbreviations, right, just poorly made russian transliterations.
- Robotbeat 6y agoThat’s what’s so awesome about it. All the elitist notions of what a programming language or database cannot be or has to be, about speed, best practices, standards, safety, harmful functions like GOTO, etc, fall to the wayside with a pragmatic interface that gets rid of all the required cruft and toolchains, just giving all the users direct access to power. And practically everyone in a desk job uses it occasionally. It’s as ubiquitous as coffee. It’s a refreshing rebuke to modern convoluted toolchains, binary signing, prohibitions against doing this or that, all the ceremony of modern programming. It goes directly against the trend to make computers increasingly locked down in functionality, mere appliances for passive consumption by and harvesting of data from the masses. It’s like giving everyone in a desk job a Leatherman multitool and a lighter. A bicycle for the mind in actual truth. Permissionless innovation at its finest. Excel! Excelsior!