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Often I can do what I need in a few minutes in excel where à programmer would take hours and not give me what I actually asked for. And in excel I can modify an

Often I can do what I need in a few minutes in excel where à programmer would take hours and not give me what I actually asked for. And in excel I can modify and update my work. Where a programme solution is static and needs tons more hours for every change needed. Often we see people claiming that "This new thing is the spreadsheet killer, like ai at the moment. People have been saying this forever but spreadsheets are still here. And there's a good reason for it.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
There are only two things I've seen that ever came close to actual "spreadsheet killers" - MS Access and computational notebooks (Jupyter, Observable webapp). And it so happens that both are very similar in principle to Excel spreadsheets. They're optimized for certain paradigm (reactive cells, RDBMS CRUD, reactive cells accepting code and outputting rich content), but otherwise don't constrain you - instead, they invite you to build your thing incrementally, figuring your problem out as you build the solution, with full visibility into intermediate states. The only way AI has a chance of killing spreadsheets is if it replaces a Real Programmers, by becoming a tool that lets anyone interactively build arbitrary apps, for free (on the margin), with near zero turnaround.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
> Often I can do what I need in a few minutes in excel where à programmer would take hours and not give me what I actually asked for That's likely not down to the tool, more likely a complex requirement you understand but they don't. (And are you sure you're getting the right answer? IIRC an analysis showed 10% of spreadsheets have errors - devs do care about good results, and that does take extra time) > Where a programme solution is static and needs tons more hours for every change needed. Hmm. Sounds like there's something wrong here, with your guys or some aspect of the business (and sure, excel is not a bad tool, just to be clear).
- analog31 3y ago
  Economics. The scarcity of devs always leads to rationing and its related sources of friction. From the "requestor" standpoint, friction could dominate the cost of getting things done.
pjc50 3y ago
What I think more people should appreciate is that in any business process, computer or otherwise, there's a speed/generality/correctness/accountability tradeoff. AI sits at the "speed" corner. Excel, a fully dynamic interactive programming language with one type "cell", gives slightly better correctness and accountability. Coalescing process into program continues to move you to the other end. Once you start employing typechecking and later formal verification, you get more correctness and accountability - BUT at a cost of development time, AND generality. The correctness is achieved precisely by being tailored to the specifics and rejecting the general. This can apply to entirely physical processes. Some "aerospace" grade parts are very similar to normal parts .. but with a huge overhead of accountability. Because getting the right outcome matters.
analog31 3y ago
This is huge. Programmers and programming are not the problem. the process is. For a wide variety of uses, the cost of programming erases the value added.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

There are only two things I've seen that ever came close to actual "spreadsheet killers" - MS Access and computational notebooks (Jupyter, Observable webapp). And it so happens that both are very similar in principle to Excel spreadsheets. They're optimized for certain paradigm (reactive cells, RDBMS CRUD, reactive cells accepting code and outputting rich content), but otherwise don't constrain you - instead, they invite you to build your thing incrementally, figuring your problem out as you build the solution, with full visibility into intermediate states. The only way AI has a chance of killing spreadsheets is if it replaces a Real Programmers, by becoming a tool that lets anyone interactively build arbitrary apps, for free (on the margin), with near zero turnaround.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago

> Often I can do what I need in a few minutes in excel where à programmer would take hours and not give me what I actually asked for That's likely not down to the tool, more likely a complex requirement you understand but they don't. (And are you sure you're getting the right answer? IIRC an analysis showed 10% of spreadsheets have errors - devs do care about good results, and that does take extra time) > Where a programme solution is static and needs tons more hours for every change needed. Hmm. Sounds like there's something wrong here, with your guys or some aspect of the business (and sure, excel is not a bad tool, just to be clear).

analog31 3y ago
Economics. The scarcity of devs always leads to rationing and its related sources of friction. From the "requestor" standpoint, friction could dominate the cost of getting things done.

pjc50 3y ago

What I think more people should appreciate is that in any business process, computer or otherwise, there's a speed/generality/correctness/accountability tradeoff. AI sits at the "speed" corner. Excel, a fully dynamic interactive programming language with one type "cell", gives slightly better correctness and accountability. Coalescing process into program continues to move you to the other end. Once you start employing typechecking and later formal verification, you get more correctness and accountability - BUT at a cost of development time, AND generality. The correctness is achieved precisely by being tailored to the specifics and rejecting the general. This can apply to entirely physical processes. Some "aerospace" grade parts are very similar to normal parts .. but with a huge overhead of accountability. Because getting the right outcome matters.

analog31 3y ago

This is huge. Programmers and programming are not the problem. the process is. For a wide variety of uses, the cost of programming erases the value added.