5 ms·
It's good for doing one-time analyses, but hard to automate when you have many inputs that are updated as time passes, or if you need to feed the output of one
by minimax 14y ago
It's good for doing one-time analyses, but hard to automate when you have many inputs that are updated as time passes, or if you need to feed the output of one spreadsheet into another.
Tangentially related: I've been thinking recently about how hard it would be to teach a real programming language to Excel users. They would already have some grasp of functions, arrays, and variables. I think the analogues might have some pedagogical value.
- 1337biz 14y ago* They would already have some grasp of functions, arrays, and variables.* You are very optimistic here... Very optimistic. My guess is that 90% of excel users are at a maximum using the sorting button.
- gknoy 14y agoAlso, many 2d arrays of cells which represent data, and progressive calculations. And table lookups. This is, understandably, fun to debug.
- shrikant 14y ago> I've been thinking recently about how hard it would be to teach a real programming language to Excel users. They would already have some grasp of functions, arrays, and variables. A not-insignificant part of my previous job was training Excel users to use non-Excel reporting and analysis tools. I believe I can say honestly say that 100% of them had no idea of arrays or variables, and only about a third of them even used the built-in Excel functions.
- minimax 14y agoBut could you explain variables and arrays in terms of spreadsheet cells and rows (or columns)? That is what I was thinking would be useful.
- chernevik 14y agoI teach a short session on moving analysis from Excel to SQL. Many power Excel users make the jump pretty smoothly. Once you get them thinking about a work flow moving from one table to another, they get it. But we're talking here about some very bright people accustomed basically hacking the one thing they know to get results. It's a subset of "Excel users" generally.