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It is and it isn't. For one of my first jobs, I had to spend a lot of time converting excel into python. Excel is great for small places, but the moment you n

It is and it isn't. For one of my first jobs, I had to spend a lot of time converting excel into python. Excel is great for small places, but the moment you need to have oversight and accountability in an organization. You need a different centralized, permission controlled, and auditable solution.

hgsgm 4y ago
bee_rider 4y ago
It seems like quite a flaw in Microsoft's ecosystem that those requirements can't be met by some integration between Excel and, like, Sharepoint or whatever.
qsort 4y ago
I think the fatal flaw is that there is no upgrade path towards sanity. If I start from a jupyter notebook or a script or whatever, it's trivial to build upon it. In Excel it's just an endless descent into madness. All those funky features are just bandaids over a fundamentally wrong abstraction. We have to acknowledge it's pretty much the only real tool for citizen developers out there, and as such it deserves some credit. But I don't really think it has any real advantage over $(your favorite scripting language); if you are proficient at coding I don't see why you would implement anything nontrivial in Excel given the choice. The truly infuriating thing is that it wouldn't take much for spreadsheets to become literal 10x magic, but it's one of those path-dependent things. Sad.
- plonk 4y ago
  > But I don't really think it has any real advantage over $(your favorite scripting language); if you are proficient at coding I don't see why you would implement anything nontrivial in Excel given the choice. If you wanted to implement a spreadsheet, you'd be wasting your time with Python though. I'd rather manage and visualise my monthly budget in Excel.
  - bloaf 4y ago
    I think this is the missing piece. Excel is great at user input. Getting the same level of copy-paste, drag-drop, drag-auto-complete, "tweak until it looks right before I move on" data-entry experience is non-trivial.
mhd 4y ago
> You need a different centralized, permission controlled, and auditable solution. So, Access? ;) But seriously, I really miss "PC" databases, Clipper etc.; Would often fill niches between spreadsheets and webapps. (Airtable etc. are trying to do part of that, but I'd say that's more a symptom than a solution)
narush 4y ago
Totally agree that audibility is an important part of the story here! Having spent the past 2 years building a spreadsheet [1], it's really interesting how often we run into design problems that pit "audibility" against "what you expect from a spreadsheet." A simple example: imagine you add a filter to column to remove null values, you then go and create a new formula that is dependent on this filtered column, before finally going back to edit the filter. On one hand, effective audibility usually implies a nice, linear story you can follow and understand. On the other hand, users expect filters to update based on the most recent values - but the filter is applied in a way-old step. In practice, there's a bunch of extra state you have to store to make sure things work properly, and even then, there are lots of foot guns! [1] https://trymito.io https://trymito.io

hgsgm 4y ago

bee_rider 4y ago

It seems like quite a flaw in Microsoft's ecosystem that those requirements can't be met by some integration between Excel and, like, Sharepoint or whatever.

qsort 4y ago

I think the fatal flaw is that there is no upgrade path towards sanity. If I start from a jupyter notebook or a script or whatever, it's trivial to build upon it. In Excel it's just an endless descent into madness. All those funky features are just bandaids over a fundamentally wrong abstraction. We have to acknowledge it's pretty much the only real tool for citizen developers out there, and as such it deserves some credit. But I don't really think it has any real advantage over $(your favorite scripting language); if you are proficient at coding I don't see why you would implement anything nontrivial in Excel given the choice. The truly infuriating thing is that it wouldn't take much for spreadsheets to become literal 10x magic, but it's one of those path-dependent things. Sad.

plonk 4y ago
> But I don't really think it has any real advantage over $(your favorite scripting language); if you are proficient at coding I don't see why you would implement anything nontrivial in Excel given the choice. If you wanted to implement a spreadsheet, you'd be wasting your time with Python though. I'd rather manage and visualise my monthly budget in Excel.
- bloaf 4y ago
  I think this is the missing piece. Excel is great at user input. Getting the same level of copy-paste, drag-drop, drag-auto-complete, "tweak until it looks right before I move on" data-entry experience is non-trivial.

mhd 4y ago

> You need a different centralized, permission controlled, and auditable solution. So, Access? ;) But seriously, I really miss "PC" databases, Clipper etc.; Would often fill niches between spreadsheets and webapps. (Airtable etc. are trying to do part of that, but I'd say that's more a symptom than a solution)

narush 4y ago

Totally agree that audibility is an important part of the story here! Having spent the past 2 years building a spreadsheet [1], it's really interesting how often we run into design problems that pit "audibility" against "what you expect from a spreadsheet." A simple example: imagine you add a filter to column to remove null values, you then go and create a new formula that is dependent on this filtered column, before finally going back to edit the filter. On one hand, effective audibility usually implies a nice, linear story you can follow and understand. On the other hand, users expect filters to update based on the most recent values - but the filter is applied in a way-old step. In practice, there's a bunch of extra state you have to store to make sure things work properly, and even then, there are lots of foot guns! [1] https://trymito.io https://trymito.io