4 ms·

this is a really weird competition. I know of many desks still using excel to run/update models which are almost always consumed by human traders. This is a v

by RayVR 5y ago

this is a really weird competition. I know of many desks still using excel to run/update models which are almost always consumed by human traders. This is a very antiquated and generally fragile system that has a very steep learning curve with very expensive maintenance in the form of what are often called "Junior Portfolio Manager" or "Analyst" being mostly responsible for waking up before the rest of the team to log in, make sure the spreadsheets were/are updating, and fix any issues. The "scheduling" for these systems is usually a manual start or in more sophisticated teams, a scheduled job on a windows desktop (which fails ~30% of the time for unknown reasons) I personally know several people that started this way, survived for 3-5 years and then moved to larger/more successful teams or companies that had the resources and knowledge to actually solve these problems. Anyone thinking about going this route would be better served by picking up some basic Python.

aspenmayer 5y ago
If Excel is the Old Way, what’s the current state of the art for GUI software to do these kinds of operations and analysis? Is there an equivalent of the modern ELK stack, but for numerical analysis? Not everyone can, will, or should have to learn Python.
- 88840-8855 5y ago
  Excel is superior to Python in so many ways for many use cases. It is visual (and this already kills the competition. Forget leading three executive through the final m&a python model), you can build small models in seconds or minutes, the learning curve is flatter and hence it reaches more people, auditing is much easier, tiny tweaks can be made much quicker (especially for people who did not setup the model) and it does not require years of studying coding.. i put our interns infront of excel and within 2-3 weeks of hard work they can do their calculations. Impossible for regular business and finance guys if they would have to so this all in python.
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    Have you used Power BI? I haven’t, and I’m not sure they’re comparable, but at least Microsoft isn’t resting on their laurels when it comes to productivity software for analysis use cases.
    - 88840-8855 5y ago
      Yes, ofc i used power bi. It's great, but it cannot do those things that excel can and vice versa. They complement each other rather than replace.
      - aspenmayer 5y ago
        Do you think Excel will gain tighter integrations with scripting? I read about Excel getting better scripting support but I forgot what all that entailed and what languages were supported. Thanks for your perspective, by the way. I don’t use Excel much for higher order stuff, but I want to progress past pivot tables.
        r00f 5y ago
        Not sure what exactly you mean by scripting support. I used to know a girl who was working in big consultancy, and her team was making sales predictions for huge global brands, in Excel. She was writing some frightening amounts of code in Visual Basic, up to the point when I thought they used Excel just like a fancy IDE for their VB, which was the actual work. Who needs Excel formulas when you have VB, right? It was very philosophical for me to hang out with her sometimes, because we liked to discuss our jobs and all that time she denied when I told her she was a programmer.
        aspenmayer 5y ago
        Excel on the web has different scripting features and functionality than the desktop version, called Office Scripts, and Power Automate integrations. It also has something called Action Recorder, which seems like a native built-in AutoHotKey type deal. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/scripts/overview/excel https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/scripts/overview...
vgatherps 5y ago
I have some experience working with such a team after coming from one of the more sophisticated shops, and have built an 'improved' tool along these lines that my own shop uses to great success. There's a few problems that occur: * excel is a super powerful tool that lots of programmers underestimate - it's a legitimate dataflow programming tool, provides rapid feedback, has mediocre model visualization (as opposed to the none that many replacements offer), can be hooked into tones of data sources with live updating in the gui, supports all the expected copy/paste stuff, etc. * Worse versions of what normally comes from changing workflows - 'too risky', 'too much effort', etc * In my experience human traders go hand in hand with GIANT egos and are very unwilling to listen to anybody saying things can be made better * A firm that finds success with human traders and excel won't reap the benefits of a proper programming model - easier simulations, better version control, reusable models, etc.
- hgibbs 5y ago
  I honestly can't think of a use case for excel that pandas doesn't handle better. The 1 million row limit is crazy limiting, it's just nicer to not have to worry about that kind of stuff.
  - kieferbc 5y ago
    There isn’t a 1M row limit. There is an entire backend data model that can hook into any data source for the most part and can be written in a functional language.
  - fifilura 5y ago
    Pandas just extends that 1M row limit to ~10M row limit (whatever fits in your RAM) And whenever I work with pandas I run into pesky bugs with not handling integers properly. My answer to that, for both pandas and excel work is to do as much of the work in SQL/views as possible.
    - aulin 5y ago
      could you elaborate more on the pandas bugs?

by RayVR 5y ago

aspenmayer 5y ago

If Excel is the Old Way, what’s the current state of the art for GUI software to do these kinds of operations and analysis? Is there an equivalent of the modern ELK stack, but for numerical analysis? Not everyone can, will, or should have to learn Python.

88840-8855 5y ago
Excel is superior to Python in so many ways for many use cases. It is visual (and this already kills the competition. Forget leading three executive through the final m&a python model), you can build small models in seconds or minutes, the learning curve is flatter and hence it reaches more people, auditing is much easier, tiny tweaks can be made much quicker (especially for people who did not setup the model) and it does not require years of studying coding.. i put our interns infront of excel and within 2-3 weeks of hard work they can do their calculations. Impossible for regular business and finance guys if they would have to so this all in python.
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  Have you used Power BI? I haven’t, and I’m not sure they’re comparable, but at least Microsoft isn’t resting on their laurels when it comes to productivity software for analysis use cases.
  - 88840-8855 5y ago
    Yes, ofc i used power bi. It's great, but it cannot do those things that excel can and vice versa. They complement each other rather than replace.
    - aspenmayer 5y ago
      Do you think Excel will gain tighter integrations with scripting? I read about Excel getting better scripting support but I forgot what all that entailed and what languages were supported. Thanks for your perspective, by the way. I don’t use Excel much for higher order stuff, but I want to progress past pivot tables.
      - r00f 5y ago
        Not sure what exactly you mean by scripting support. I used to know a girl who was working in big consultancy, and her team was making sales predictions for huge global brands, in Excel. She was writing some frightening amounts of code in Visual Basic, up to the point when I thought they used Excel just like a fancy IDE for their VB, which was the actual work. Who needs Excel formulas when you have VB, right? It was very philosophical for me to hang out with her sometimes, because we liked to discuss our jobs and all that time she denied when I told her she was a programmer.
        aspenmayer 5y ago
        Excel on the web has different scripting features and functionality than the desktop version, called Office Scripts, and Power Automate integrations. It also has something called Action Recorder, which seems like a native built-in AutoHotKey type deal. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/scripts/overview/excel https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/scripts/overview...

vgatherps 5y ago

I have some experience working with such a team after coming from one of the more sophisticated shops, and have built an 'improved' tool along these lines that my own shop uses to great success. There's a few problems that occur: * excel is a super powerful tool that lots of programmers underestimate - it's a legitimate dataflow programming tool, provides rapid feedback, has mediocre model visualization (as opposed to the none that many replacements offer), can be hooked into tones of data sources with live updating in the gui, supports all the expected copy/paste stuff, etc. * Worse versions of what normally comes from changing workflows - 'too risky', 'too much effort', etc * In my experience human traders go hand in hand with GIANT egos and are very unwilling to listen to anybody saying things can be made better * A firm that finds success with human traders and excel won't reap the benefits of a proper programming model - easier simulations, better version control, reusable models, etc.

hgibbs 5y ago
I honestly can't think of a use case for excel that pandas doesn't handle better. The 1 million row limit is crazy limiting, it's just nicer to not have to worry about that kind of stuff.
- kieferbc 5y ago
  There isn’t a 1M row limit. There is an entire backend data model that can hook into any data source for the most part and can be written in a functional language.
- fifilura 5y ago
  Pandas just extends that 1M row limit to ~10M row limit (whatever fits in your RAM) And whenever I work with pandas I run into pesky bugs with not handling integers properly. My answer to that, for both pandas and excel work is to do as much of the work in SQL/views as possible.
  - aulin 5y ago
    could you elaborate more on the pandas bugs?