4 ms·

Excel. Nothing comes close really

alchemist1e9 4y ago
Do current versions of Excel actually fully work in Wine now? That would be a big deal and if true embarrassing I didn’t know about it.
ogogmad 4y ago
Is this because of compatibility and VBA macros? In a vacuum, what Excel does is straightforward, and there's lots of free alternatives. Don't get me wrong -- I think it's a great program, but I don't see anything unique about it.
- Denvercoder9 4y ago
  > In a vacuum, what Excel does is straightforward, and there's lots of free alternatives. That's true in theory, but Excel executes it so much better than Google Sheets or LibreOffice Calc.
  - ogogmad 4y ago
    Why? I occasionally use them* for taxes and whatnot, and they pretty much work identically. The differences seem at best marginal. * - LO Calc and MS Excel.
    - artificial 4y ago
      Similar to how databases are nearly identical superficially. Once you have a non trivial coupling the inertia kicks in. That said, depending on your use case (light usage minimial complex multi sheet macros) the differences are indeed minor.
      - omginternets 4y ago
        An example would be helpful.
jwr 4y ago
Interesting — I hear that repeated sometimes, but it always turns out that the person stating that opinion is an Excel expert and barely looked at anything else. Having used Excel, Numbers, OpenOffice (since back when it was still StarOffice), and Google Sheets, I find it to be a mixed bag. For example, there are certain things which Numbers does way better (drag&drop rows to reorder them, for example) and I personally prefer it for my work. But most importantly, I haven't found Excel to be "way above the rest" at all.
- tacroqueen 4y ago
  No offense but you clearly are not a spreadsheet power user (and to be clear you're starting off with what feels like a pretentious reply/generalization: always turns out that the person stating that opinion is an Excel expert and barely looked at anything else.) I have never heard anyone that has used both products deeply ever admit that Numbers comes close to the capabilities of Excel (and this includes a few former Numbers devs). They really aren't even in the same product category. For basic spreadsheet stuff that 90% of people do, sure, and Numbers does have some UI niceties - but the differences go well beyond drag and drop behavior. It's way harder if not impossible to use AppleScript like you can VBA. What is the Numbers equivalent of ODBC? How do you connect pivot tables to external sources? Excel has tremendously more builtin functions. Excel has far better performance, which can start to matter. Meanwhile Numbers can have field types like star ratings. It uses a fundamentally different visual abstraction. Numbers focuses more on appearance and makes better looking graphs easily out of the box. At the limits of their feature sets though, these are really tools aimed at different audiences. For basic spreadsheet functionality, all of the major spreadsheet programs in the last 2 decades are serviceable.
  - dijit 4y ago
    the major issue the parent eluded to was a sort of sunk cost fallacy that exists in the spreadsheet ecosystem. Excel is great software, truly, what it enables people to do is impressive (and awful sometimes). But once you have convinced yourself that its industry standard, why look as deeply into alternatives to even figure out if there are better tools? all of them will have quirks, some will certainly be more powerful in some areas (google docs has the ability to read data direct from bigquery for example). Many already convinced themselves that excel is the one true format and there is no reason to look hard at anything else. Others don't want their investment in learning to be wasted. Theres a lot of people who are genuinely not incentivised to look at the ecosystem critically.

Do current versions of Excel actually fully work in Wine now? That would be a big deal and if true embarrassing I didn’t know about it.

ogogmad 4y ago

Is this because of compatibility and VBA macros? In a vacuum, what Excel does is straightforward, and there's lots of free alternatives. Don't get me wrong -- I think it's a great program, but I don't see anything unique about it.

Denvercoder9 4y ago
> In a vacuum, what Excel does is straightforward, and there's lots of free alternatives. That's true in theory, but Excel executes it so much better than Google Sheets or LibreOffice Calc.
- ogogmad 4y ago
  Why? I occasionally use them* for taxes and whatnot, and they pretty much work identically. The differences seem at best marginal. * - LO Calc and MS Excel.
  - artificial 4y ago
    Similar to how databases are nearly identical superficially. Once you have a non trivial coupling the inertia kicks in. That said, depending on your use case (light usage minimial complex multi sheet macros) the differences are indeed minor.
    - omginternets 4y ago
      An example would be helpful.

jwr 4y ago

Interesting — I hear that repeated sometimes, but it always turns out that the person stating that opinion is an Excel expert and barely looked at anything else. Having used Excel, Numbers, OpenOffice (since back when it was still StarOffice), and Google Sheets, I find it to be a mixed bag. For example, there are certain things which Numbers does way better (drag&drop rows to reorder them, for example) and I personally prefer it for my work. But most importantly, I haven't found Excel to be "way above the rest" at all.

tacroqueen 4y ago
No offense but you clearly are not a spreadsheet power user (and to be clear you're starting off with what feels like a pretentious reply/generalization: always turns out that the person stating that opinion is an Excel expert and barely looked at anything else.) I have never heard anyone that has used both products deeply ever admit that Numbers comes close to the capabilities of Excel (and this includes a few former Numbers devs). They really aren't even in the same product category. For basic spreadsheet stuff that 90% of people do, sure, and Numbers does have some UI niceties - but the differences go well beyond drag and drop behavior. It's way harder if not impossible to use AppleScript like you can VBA. What is the Numbers equivalent of ODBC? How do you connect pivot tables to external sources? Excel has tremendously more builtin functions. Excel has far better performance, which can start to matter. Meanwhile Numbers can have field types like star ratings. It uses a fundamentally different visual abstraction. Numbers focuses more on appearance and makes better looking graphs easily out of the box. At the limits of their feature sets though, these are really tools aimed at different audiences. For basic spreadsheet functionality, all of the major spreadsheet programs in the last 2 decades are serviceable.
- dijit 4y ago
  the major issue the parent eluded to was a sort of sunk cost fallacy that exists in the spreadsheet ecosystem. Excel is great software, truly, what it enables people to do is impressive (and awful sometimes). But once you have convinced yourself that its industry standard, why look as deeply into alternatives to even figure out if there are better tools? all of them will have quirks, some will certainly be more powerful in some areas (google docs has the ability to read data direct from bigquery for example). Many already convinced themselves that excel is the one true format and there is no reason to look hard at anything else. Others don't want their investment in learning to be wasted. Theres a lot of people who are genuinely not incentivised to look at the ecosystem critically.