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The problem is fundamental to the spreadsheet data model. Spreadsheets use the "big bag of cells" data model, where anything can go anywhere. The people who en
by somat 3y ago
The problem is fundamental to the spreadsheet data model. Spreadsheets use the "big bag of cells" data model, where anything can go anywhere. The people who enjoy spreadsheets like this data model, it is very quick to get something up and running. Those of us who don't like spreadsheets hate it. it encourages the mixing of data and code. it promotes coding via copy/paste and all the opportunities for code/data addressing mismatches that go with it. But for me the thing that drives spreadsheets from mildly annoying to outright dislike is that there is very little done to keep data rows intact, it is very easy for items in a row of data to end up where they shouldn't be. All I really want is row security... So I ended up replacing my spreadsheets with relational databases. the UI sucks in comparison. but at least my rows stay intact.
- elmolino89 3y agoEven with plain text CSV files one can detect that a given cell was changed, have md5 checksums of files, etc. In a day to day use where users often share their edits using emails just figuring out which is the correct and most recent copy is a fools errand. In some settings the sheets are just a giant white boards: different parts of the same sheet can contain partially replicated and not cross-checked data. Samples in columns, so each row is a different type. "Free flow of thought" or annotations of say numerical cell with text in the same cell. All this steams from the fact that users do not see the data as something to be queried and compared but as a board one can just look at.