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>That's like if you asked how to sort a list and remove duplicates, and the answer was to import it into a spreadsheet program and follow these steps instead of
by yyyk 3y ago
>That's like if you asked how to sort a list and remove duplicates, and the answer was to import it into a spreadsheet program and follow these steps instead of just "sort | uniq".
That's exactly how many Windows office users do it, they paste a list into Excel and use it to remove duplicates. There are alternatives even on Windows, but It's must easier for them to use a single general-purpose graphical tool (and let's not get started with the abominations VLOOKUP is used for).
I used to look down on that but then I realized that using a graphical program for list manipulation is kinda cool and that this program is rather capable, and could create combinations that are rather difficult to do with the more specialized tools. I still use these specialized tools (I'm used to them, and I can do some stuff they can't easily do in Excel).
- TeMPOraL 3y agoYeah, I used to look down on that kind of things too, and a decade later, I find myself doing those very things. Yes, I know sort | uniq. I even have a couple Linux shells open on my Windows work system. But I can't for the life of me remember the magic flags, so I'll either paste the list to Emacs and M-x sort-lines + M-x delete-duplicate-lines, or paste it to Excel and do it there, or do something even more cheesy - whatever is least likely to break my flow. There are tools more or less optimized for any specific job, but the best tool for the job is the one you have handy, and are experienced in using. I too increasingly often find myself using GPT-4 for random, ad-hoc tasks. They may or may not be better tools out there. I may even have some installed. But none of them beat being able to just describe what you want, paste some data, and get the results out few seconds later.