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Excel is another amazing piece of software, that is almost universally looked down upon by programmers. Why make complex calculations in a GUI if you can just w

Excel is another amazing piece of software, that is almost universally looked down upon by programmers. Why make complex calculations in a GUI if you can just write a Python script with numpy and pandas!? And yet, so much of the world runs on excel spreadsheets being sent back and forth. Why? Because 1) it has a low skill floor and very high ceiling, 2) everyone uses the same tool (or at least it's backward and forward-compatible), and (critically) 3) it has a "programming model" that actually makes sense to the vast majority of people. Same with Arduino, by the way. I think Arduino is a masterpiece. It allows people that don't even consider themselves programmers to write code for embedded systems with ease (traditionally a very hard thing to do). They go to the Arduino website, download a program, open an example, click a button and it works. Also, the libraries are designed to be used by non-experts. That's so rare in the software world (and I don't know why*). * I have some guesses but they are not nice to the programmers that make and use trendy software libraries.

kitd 4y ago
Excel is another amazing piece of software, that is almost universally looked down upon by programmers. I read somewhere that there are 10 x more Excel "programmers" in the world than programmers for all other languages put together.
- 7thaccount 4y ago
  To give a little anecdote, my 600 person company probably has 200+ engineers (mostly electrical with some mechanical). I'd say that 1/5 has some programming skill in Python or C# and 1/10 probably is pretty decent and spends 5+ hours a week writing code. I'm fairly confident that all 200/200 are competent Excel users with most all spending 10+ hours a week doing spreadsheets mapping data together and analyzing it. Pandas is great, but if you don't need all the stats and the dataset fits in the spreadsheet, Excel beats it hands down in most uses.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  I would not be surprised. I have said before that Excel is the most widely used programming environment in history and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, and it is all precisely because it provides users an on-ramp to programming in a domain where it is sorely needed.
  - namaria 4y ago
    Whenever I hear someone hyping up some lowcode/nocode thing or asking about it, I point them to Excel and Access and say "that concept is older then Python, and it's not going anywhere".
runlaszlorun 4y ago
As someone with an MBA (I know… forgive me father for I have sinned) I actually had been thinking that simple Python and maybe something like Jupiter might actually be a great alternative for spreadsheets while teaching business. I not knocking spreadsheets- they’ve obviously stood the test of time. I feel their weakness is that the formulae are hidden and you’d need to click on individual cells to make sure their isn’t a logic error.
- jdiez17 4y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I think Jupyter Notebooks are great if you are a programmer or want to learn programming. But there's a massive usability gap between downloading an application and "open the command line, run pip install jupyter, oh pip is not installed, google the error message, copy and paste this command from a random website, try again, etc". It's better now with JupyterLab Desktop, but that's only been around for a few months.

kitd 4y ago

Excel is another amazing piece of software, that is almost universally looked down upon by programmers. I read somewhere that there are 10 x more Excel "programmers" in the world than programmers for all other languages put together.

7thaccount 4y ago
To give a little anecdote, my 600 person company probably has 200+ engineers (mostly electrical with some mechanical). I'd say that 1/5 has some programming skill in Python or C# and 1/10 probably is pretty decent and spends 5+ hours a week writing code. I'm fairly confident that all 200/200 are competent Excel users with most all spending 10+ hours a week doing spreadsheets mapping data together and analyzing it. Pandas is great, but if you don't need all the stats and the dataset fits in the spreadsheet, Excel beats it hands down in most uses.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
I would not be surprised. I have said before that Excel is the most widely used programming environment in history and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, and it is all precisely because it provides users an on-ramp to programming in a domain where it is sorely needed.
- namaria 4y ago
  Whenever I hear someone hyping up some lowcode/nocode thing or asking about it, I point them to Excel and Access and say "that concept is older then Python, and it's not going anywhere".

runlaszlorun 4y ago

As someone with an MBA (I know… forgive me father for I have sinned) I actually had been thinking that simple Python and maybe something like Jupiter might actually be a great alternative for spreadsheets while teaching business. I not knocking spreadsheets- they’ve obviously stood the test of time. I feel their weakness is that the formulae are hidden and you’d need to click on individual cells to make sure their isn’t a logic error.

jdiez17 4y ago
Don't get me wrong, I think Jupyter Notebooks are great if you are a programmer or want to learn programming. But there's a massive usability gap between downloading an application and "open the command line, run pip install jupyter, oh pip is not installed, google the error message, copy and paste this command from a random website, try again, etc". It's better now with JupyterLab Desktop, but that's only been around for a few months.