4 ms·

I remember that one... In the end the harsh truth for MS is that a guesstimate of 99% of all offices and administration users are using and, most of all, only n

I remember that one... In the end the harsh truth for MS is that a guesstimate of 99% of all offices and administration users are using and, most of all, only need 1% of the features Office (including Excel) do offer. The other harsh truth is that those using more advanced features are typically creating spreadsheets full of errors and bugs, which should be better rewritten in dedicated apps. The world is using MS Office but the world really doesn't need that turd. I ve both ported an Excel spreadsheet to dedicated app and helped SMEs move everything to Google workspace. Fuck MS Office.

Havoc 3y ago
> The other harsh truth is that those using more advanced features are typically creating spreadsheets full of errors and bugs, which should be better rewritten in dedicated apps. My experience has been the mirror opposite. I’m doing finance/accounting day to day but can also code. The attempts to replace excel with custom apps were consistently absolute horror shows full of consultants, endless meetings, coders not understanding finance nuances, endless parallel running, budget overruns. And then months and a couple of 100k spent later all to duplicate a spreadsheet someone had originally slapped together in a day or two. Not wildly attached to excel but now actively steer clear from custom app projects due to career risk of being in proximity of these. It’s the same as big SAP projects once the “customizations” start. The implementing teams incentives are the precise opposite of the business. Bill as much as possible, extend project timeline, add more features and widgets, make things seem more complicated than they need to be, pull users away from their work to test, cater to the execs with dashboard instead of the team in trenches, endless CYA processes camouflaged as “end user acceptance”, office politics shenanigans to promote the solution etc. I’d much rather debug & streamline a spreadsheet than deal with all that. I do agree that spreadsheets tend towards chaos as complexity increases though…
- CRConrad 3y ago
  > The attempts to replace excel with custom apps were consistently absolute horror shows full of consultants, endless meetings, coders not understanding finance nuances, endless parallel running, budget overruns. And then months and a couple of 100k spent later all to duplicate a spreadsheet someone had originally slapped together in a day or two. "Modern Web Apps", based on "The Modern Data Stack", and so on...? Give the spreadsheets (and access to two or three of the people who made and use them!) to one or two guy[s] with Delphi, and you'll have an old-fashioned client-server app -- which isn't a bad thing; it's what you want in contexts like this -- in a week or less. For the first one; the following ones are faster.

Havoc 3y ago

> The other harsh truth is that those using more advanced features are typically creating spreadsheets full of errors and bugs, which should be better rewritten in dedicated apps. My experience has been the mirror opposite. I’m doing finance/accounting day to day but can also code. The attempts to replace excel with custom apps were consistently absolute horror shows full of consultants, endless meetings, coders not understanding finance nuances, endless parallel running, budget overruns. And then months and a couple of 100k spent later all to duplicate a spreadsheet someone had originally slapped together in a day or two. Not wildly attached to excel but now actively steer clear from custom app projects due to career risk of being in proximity of these. It’s the same as big SAP projects once the “customizations” start. The implementing teams incentives are the precise opposite of the business. Bill as much as possible, extend project timeline, add more features and widgets, make things seem more complicated than they need to be, pull users away from their work to test, cater to the execs with dashboard instead of the team in trenches, endless CYA processes camouflaged as “end user acceptance”, office politics shenanigans to promote the solution etc. I’d much rather debug & streamline a spreadsheet than deal with all that. I do agree that spreadsheets tend towards chaos as complexity increases though…

CRConrad 3y ago
> The attempts to replace excel with custom apps were consistently absolute horror shows full of consultants, endless meetings, coders not understanding finance nuances, endless parallel running, budget overruns. And then months and a couple of 100k spent later all to duplicate a spreadsheet someone had originally slapped together in a day or two. "Modern Web Apps", based on "The Modern Data Stack", and so on...? Give the spreadsheets (and access to two or three of the people who made and use them!) to one or two guy[s] with Delphi, and you'll have an old-fashioned client-server app -- which isn't a bad thing; it's what you want in contexts like this -- in a week or less. For the first one; the following ones are faster.