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> Indeed, as you work on your Excel clone, you’ll discover all kinds of subtle details about date handling. When does Excel convert numbers to dates? How does t

> Indeed, as you work on your Excel clone, you’ll discover all kinds of subtle details about date handling. When does Excel convert numbers to dates? How does the formatting work? Why is 1/31 interpreted as January 31 of this year, while 1/50 is interpreted as January 1st, 1950? All of these subtle bits of behavior cannot be fully documented without writing a document that has the same amount of information as the Excel source code. A quick note to anybody building an Excel clone: If you want to turn this insane date handling behavior of Excel into an optional feature that can be disabled everybody will appreciate it.

atoav 3y ago
I always wondered why they won't just make it a popup button? Default should be to not change anything, if a date is recognized offer a button right next to the cell that allows you to accept the suggestion to turn it into a fully fledged date. Just make it so that pressing tab or shift enter or a similar comination accepts that suggestion.
- xigoi 3y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
  - numpad0 3y ago
    Just do https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/, happened once and it was okay.
    - xigoi 3y ago
      What comes after .docx? .docxx? .docy? .docxi?
      - jimmaswell 3y ago
        docxEx, in Win32 fashion.
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
Scientists will thank you: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...
- qclibre22 3y ago
  > Scientists will thank you Scientists gave up and changed the gene names: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=excel+gene+names+changed+septin1 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=excel+gene+names+changed+septin1
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