5 ms·

At my former company I first naivly tried to get more (non software) technical experts to use python and databases. That was quite an uphil battle, and we quic

by tda 4y ago

At my former company I first naivly tried to get more (non software) technical experts to use python and databases. That was quite an uphil battle, and we quickly pivoted to teach them how to make better use of excel. First and foremost: use tables. That easily leads to clearly deliniating input data, computations and output. Then we proceded to provide template sheets that use powerquery to fetch shared input data from centralised API's. This way we could let the end user do all the work, even though it might be a bit more messy/error prone. For well extablished workflows I could then take the excel program as a spec, and build a e.g. a webservice from that. Ss all the exceptions etc are already dealt with by the end-users, you can basically reverse engineer the spec from the excel sheet. As long as you can guide them to making legible excel sheets, it saves so much misunderstandings vs writing specs from scratch and building from that.

MrsPeaches 4y ago
> I could then take the excel program as a spec, and build a e.g. a webservice from that That sounds like a potentially great approach for consultancy business/product discovery.
- lappet 4y ago
  you can already do this with Google Sheets. I wonder if Office 365 has similar capabilities.
  - Closi 4y ago
    It does, via Microsoft Flow
ethbr0 4y ago
Excel excels as an exploratory / rapid prototyping tool. Excel fails as an app development and execution platform, and specifically one integrated into a core business process. Everyone who's worked in enterprise long enough has seen both. It'd be great if there was an enforceable "modern mode" Excel flag that kept people from going nuts with macros and programmability, while retaining all its strengths.
keithalewis 4y ago
Bingo! Excel gives you a front row seat to the problems the business is trying to solve. It is usually not the best tool, but what they put together tells you what they need for a better solution. I push things into C++ and iterate until they are satisfied the numbers are right. Nobody wants to pay for Excel add-ins, but when they need the same numbers showing up in their production systems, they will write a bigger check for a platform independent library their IT team can just link to and call. I wrote this to make that easy: https://GitHub.com https://GitHub.com

by tda 4y ago

MrsPeaches 4y ago

> I could then take the excel program as a spec, and build a e.g. a webservice from that That sounds like a potentially great approach for consultancy business/product discovery.

lappet 4y ago
you can already do this with Google Sheets. I wonder if Office 365 has similar capabilities.
- Closi 4y ago
  It does, via Microsoft Flow

ethbr0 4y ago

Excel excels as an exploratory / rapid prototyping tool. Excel fails as an app development and execution platform, and specifically one integrated into a core business process. Everyone who's worked in enterprise long enough has seen both. It'd be great if there was an enforceable "modern mode" Excel flag that kept people from going nuts with macros and programmability, while retaining all its strengths.

keithalewis 4y ago

Bingo! Excel gives you a front row seat to the problems the business is trying to solve. It is usually not the best tool, but what they put together tells you what they need for a better solution. I push things into C++ and iterate until they are satisfied the numbers are right. Nobody wants to pay for Excel add-ins, but when they need the same numbers showing up in their production systems, they will write a bigger check for a platform independent library their IT team can just link to and call. I wrote this to make that easy: https://GitHub.com https://GitHub.com