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There are a lot of really reasonable reasons to use Excel — it empowers the non-technical user, is flexible and extensible, and can easily wrangled into support

There are a lot of really reasonable reasons to use Excel — it empowers the non-technical user, is flexible and extensible, and can easily wrangled into supporting edge cases. Is it a poor replacement for a real database and application? Frequently, yes. But it frequently isn't realistic to spec & build a new application to support a growing business process. All in all, I'm not clear why we don't celebrate how empowering Excel can be to many business users, even if it can be frustrating to deal with when it evolves into a core piece of a critical business system.

coldtea 14y ago
>All in all, I'm not clear why we don't celebrate how empowering Excel can be to many business users Sometimes we do. Not all times. This is one of those "not all times". In this instance we lament the misuse of Excel by business guys.
laumars 14y ago
We don't celebrate how empowering Excel is because it becomes a giant mess in almost no time at all. Then it's dumped on people like us to fix. Excel is a fantastic tool, no doubt. It's powerful, flexible and quick to knock up. But it scales abysmally. And that's through no fault of it's own because spreadsheets aren't meant to scale, they're meant to convey tabulated data.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Sounds like what you need is a database for inputting data that doesn't require an "application" to be built around it. I guess this is what access was trying to be, but it is to technical for non techies and to non technical for techies. Perhaps even something that looks like excel but is stricter with it's inputs and some easy way to handle relations. Even showing somebody rails scaffolding can get you a fair way.
- moron4hire 14y ago
  Given the culture of Microsoft, Excel is exactly the tool that its users need it to be. MS isn't going to take chances with a major profit center like Office. I challenge anyone to make Excel as good as it is for all of its users.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I wouldn't expect such a tool to come from Microsoft, could be fertile ground for a startup maybe? The hard part is of course gaining the acceptance of existing excel users which is why I would make it look not too dissimilar from excel. The complicated technical part is making something that enforces strong schemas and good support for concurrent users without feeling complicated or overly constrained. It doesn't necessarily have to do everything that excel does, just be good for use cases like "make a customer list that everyone from the CEO to the new temp can use at once"
    - moron4hire 14y ago
      Unfortunately, computer geeks like us are far more interested in making interesting features than making things discoverable and accessible. It's hard enough to get an OSS dev to make a GUI, let alone a good one. I think the most prescient point so far has been that Excel quickly gives you a sanity check of you data, because it gives you the full view of days right away. Working on an ERP rewrite right now, this has been our continual issue, making all of the data visible, in ways that the old system never did.
    - alttab 14y ago
      Also known as google wave

coldtea 14y ago

>All in all, I'm not clear why we don't celebrate how empowering Excel can be to many business users Sometimes we do. Not all times. This is one of those "not all times". In this instance we lament the misuse of Excel by business guys.

laumars 14y ago

We don't celebrate how empowering Excel is because it becomes a giant mess in almost no time at all. Then it's dumped on people like us to fix. Excel is a fantastic tool, no doubt. It's powerful, flexible and quick to knock up. But it scales abysmally. And that's through no fault of it's own because spreadsheets aren't meant to scale, they're meant to convey tabulated data.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Sounds like what you need is a database for inputting data that doesn't require an "application" to be built around it. I guess this is what access was trying to be, but it is to technical for non techies and to non technical for techies. Perhaps even something that looks like excel but is stricter with it's inputs and some easy way to handle relations. Even showing somebody rails scaffolding can get you a fair way.

moron4hire 14y ago
Given the culture of Microsoft, Excel is exactly the tool that its users need it to be. MS isn't going to take chances with a major profit center like Office. I challenge anyone to make Excel as good as it is for all of its users.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I wouldn't expect such a tool to come from Microsoft, could be fertile ground for a startup maybe? The hard part is of course gaining the acceptance of existing excel users which is why I would make it look not too dissimilar from excel. The complicated technical part is making something that enforces strong schemas and good support for concurrent users without feeling complicated or overly constrained. It doesn't necessarily have to do everything that excel does, just be good for use cases like "make a customer list that everyone from the CEO to the new temp can use at once"
  - moron4hire 14y ago
    Unfortunately, computer geeks like us are far more interested in making interesting features than making things discoverable and accessible. It's hard enough to get an OSS dev to make a GUI, let alone a good one. I think the most prescient point so far has been that Excel quickly gives you a sanity check of you data, because it gives you the full view of days right away. Working on an ERP rewrite right now, this has been our continual issue, making all of the data visible, in ways that the old system never did.
  - alttab 14y ago
    Also known as google wave