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Imagine putting that in a spreadsheet that does a key bit of work, then watching as the orginal author leaves and subsequent users have no idea how the magic wo

Imagine putting that in a spreadsheet that does a key bit of work, then watching as the orginal author leaves and subsequent users have no idea how the magic works, just that it does, until it goes wrong. Which then throws a part of a organisation into complete chaos as they try to figure out a. whats going wrong and b. how to fix it. They then call in IT who tell them nothing to do with us guv, we dont support your spreadsheets. Which then leads to hastily calling in a "consultant" who'll charge whatever they want to sort of fix the problem, documenting it all of course so that it can be fixed in his absence. However, people leave again, the documentation gets lost and the cycle of dealing with complex Excel spreadsheets starts again.

extr 4y ago
I don't think that's quite fair. You run into that sort of problem with traditional software solutions as well, except sometimes even worse because business logic is deep in some esoteric codebase/language with all sorts of unclear dependencies. And instead of being able to ask your buddy in the accounting department to take a look, you need someone who knows Java or Python or whatever, you need a literal software engineer. I've never been at a company that didn't have at least one Excel guru (well okay, I have. It was a tech startup!). The nice thing about Excel is that it's the same everywhere, widely used, and Well Understood, even if your particular spreadsheet isn't. Personally I would rather be handed a messy spreadsheet than a messy 5k LoC Python codebase.
- drumhead 4y ago
  You tend to find these sorts of spreadsheets everywhere though, not just massive companies but small businesses, charities, non-profits. They dont have the manpower or resources to deal effectively with complexity. Its best not to add anything too complex to to their spreadsheets, but it still happens and organisations grow to reliant on them.
  - extr 4y ago
    Very true. It's kind of a lesser evils situation as to where you want to put the complexity. Personally I'd feel more comfortable putting it in Excel than a traditional programming language, for the above reasons. But there are situations where that doesn't make sense either.

extr 4y ago

I don't think that's quite fair. You run into that sort of problem with traditional software solutions as well, except sometimes even worse because business logic is deep in some esoteric codebase/language with all sorts of unclear dependencies. And instead of being able to ask your buddy in the accounting department to take a look, you need someone who knows Java or Python or whatever, you need a literal software engineer. I've never been at a company that didn't have at least one Excel guru (well okay, I have. It was a tech startup!). The nice thing about Excel is that it's the same everywhere, widely used, and Well Understood, even if your particular spreadsheet isn't. Personally I would rather be handed a messy spreadsheet than a messy 5k LoC Python codebase.

drumhead 4y ago
You tend to find these sorts of spreadsheets everywhere though, not just massive companies but small businesses, charities, non-profits. They dont have the manpower or resources to deal effectively with complexity. Its best not to add anything too complex to to their spreadsheets, but it still happens and organisations grow to reliant on them.
- extr 4y ago
  Very true. It's kind of a lesser evils situation as to where you want to put the complexity. Personally I'd feel more comfortable putting it in Excel than a traditional programming language, for the above reasons. But there are situations where that doesn't make sense either.