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This view of spreadsheets is 100% accurate, beautiful, and inspiring. Spreadsheets have brought the power of computation to everyone. ... but I love to contras

This view of spreadsheets is 100% accurate, beautiful, and inspiring. Spreadsheets have brought the power of computation to everyone. ... but I love to contrast this view with the behavior that Joel Spolsky observed: "... We visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call 'calculations.' Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a convenient way to create a table. [snip] Suddenly we understood why Lotus Improv, which was this fancy futuristic spreadsheet that was going to make Excel obsolete, had failed completely: because it was great at calculations, but terrible at creating tables, and everyone was using Excel for tables, not calculations." https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-different/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff...

Gys 3y ago
Fantastic observation. I once saw someone calculating the sum of a column (just a few numbers, ok) with a calculator!
- creakingstairs 3y ago
  There is a really famous screenshot in Korea of an old manager telling a new hire to NOT use excel functions and do it by hand (and shortly became a meme because of its absurdity). I’ve also heard similar things had happened in Japan.
  - Something1234 3y ago
    That should be considered a firable offense on the part of the manager and borderline professional malpractice. I need this screenshot.
    - xeonmc 3y ago
      Plot twist: the manager is concerned with floating point precision and the calculation require fractions to be carried throughout
      - Something1234 3y ago
        Well if it's in excel those fractions have already been destroyed. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/floating-point-arithmetic-inaccurate-result https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/...
        xeonmc 3y ago
        Hence demanding it to be done by hand from original integer entries.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - creakingstairs 3y ago
      Here you go. The messages are a hoot. To paraphrase the last sentence: "There are appropriate tools for each tasks. Just like you don't use the knife that you use to slaughter cows to slaughter chickens. And computers are the knife to slaughter cows in this case." https://imgur.com/a/T4rrav4 https://imgur.com/a/T4rrav4
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Also why the hipster war on the table element was doomed to fail in html
- edvinbesic 3y ago
  What war are you referring to, and what hipsters? As someone who used tables extensively for layout at the time, there was never any war against it, just a desire for better layout via CSS which is what we have today (flexbox, grid). Calling it a war against tables for actual tabular data is a bit over the top.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Oh, there definitely was a war. There was also a desire for a better layour (flexbox, grid) but there was a war against tables for layout ("not semantic") even when the other option was a pile of hacks and kludges based on "float".
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Table elements are pretty much completely absent from modern web dev though?
  - goatlover 3y ago
    Layout yes. But not for tabular data, they're great for that.
  - AtlasBarfed 3y ago
    Yeah only took about six or seven major revisions.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
layer8 3y ago
I remember an anecdote where some office worker after years of using Excel was very surprised to learn that the “tables program” could also do calculations.

Gys 3y ago

Fantastic observation. I once saw someone calculating the sum of a column (just a few numbers, ok) with a calculator!

creakingstairs 3y ago
There is a really famous screenshot in Korea of an old manager telling a new hire to NOT use excel functions and do it by hand (and shortly became a meme because of its absurdity). I’ve also heard similar things had happened in Japan.
- Something1234 3y ago
  That should be considered a firable offense on the part of the manager and borderline professional malpractice. I need this screenshot.
  - xeonmc 3y ago
    Plot twist: the manager is concerned with floating point precision and the calculation require fractions to be carried throughout
    - Something1234 3y ago
      Well if it's in excel those fractions have already been destroyed. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/floating-point-arithmetic-inaccurate-result https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/...
      - xeonmc 3y ago
        Hence demanding it to be done by hand from original integer entries.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - creakingstairs 3y ago
    Here you go. The messages are a hoot. To paraphrase the last sentence: "There are appropriate tools for each tasks. Just like you don't use the knife that you use to slaughter cows to slaughter chickens. And computers are the knife to slaughter cows in this case." https://imgur.com/a/T4rrav4 https://imgur.com/a/T4rrav4

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

Also why the hipster war on the table element was doomed to fail in html

edvinbesic 3y ago
What war are you referring to, and what hipsters? As someone who used tables extensively for layout at the time, there was never any war against it, just a desire for better layout via CSS which is what we have today (flexbox, grid). Calling it a war against tables for actual tabular data is a bit over the top.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 3y ago
  Oh, there definitely was a war. There was also a desire for a better layour (flexbox, grid) but there was a war against tables for layout ("not semantic") even when the other option was a pile of hacks and kludges based on "float".
ethanbond 3y ago
Table elements are pretty much completely absent from modern web dev though?
- goatlover 3y ago
  Layout yes. But not for tabular data, they're great for that.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Yeah only took about six or seven major revisions.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

layer8 3y ago

I remember an anecdote where some office worker after years of using Excel was very surprised to learn that the “tables program” could also do calculations.