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Excel is a seriously powerful tool, it is quite frankly amazing what can be done in Excel. I have worked with Excel-based trading systems with tens of thousand

by SeanDav 13y ago

Excel is a seriously powerful tool, it is quite frankly amazing what can be done in Excel. I have worked with Excel-based trading systems with tens of thousands of lines of VBA code, controlling systems that trade hundreds of millions of USD. If Excel stopped working today, by tomorrow the stock markets would likely be in a blood bath, such is the ubiquitousness of Excel in that field.

kfk 13y ago
I have worked with Excel-based trading systems with tens of thousands of lines of VBA code Having worked with some VBA myself, this sounds like a very, very, scary statement.
- davidgerard 13y ago
  It is a scary statement, and it is true, and I have friends who write VBA handling millions of pounds, and they concur that you and I should be scared.
Perseids 13y ago
It is also amazing what can be done programming in brainfuck. That something is powerful enough to do the job does not mean that it is a good tool to do the job.
- SeanDav 13y ago
  Excel is used extensively in the financial and trading fields because for many situations (predominantly RAD and prototyping) it IS the best tool for the job. We are talking about companies with serious amounts of cash to throw around at anything that gives them the slightest edge and with some of the smartest people to work for them. They use Excel because for many situations there is nothing better. Of course the particular use case I mentioned was probably pushing Excel right to the edge of the envelope and the company was actively developing a .NET replacement for it because everyone recognized this. I have no idea how that turned out but I can say that the Excel system was very impressive and very functional.
johnminter 13y ago
Excel's major problem is the ease in which point/click/copy/paste generates errors. There have been several recent cases where off-by-one cell errors have caused authors issues. This was one part of the Duke scandal (the fraud was much worse, but the Excel was sloppy) and put egg on some Harvard Econ prof's faces - to the delight of the UMASS grad student that found it...
- flogic 13y ago
  That sloppiness is also it's core strength. It allows people without training to slice and dice data. The process is almost never pretty but they're "free" to compute.
- tod222 13y ago
  > This was one part of the Duke scandal (the fraud was much worse, but the Excel was sloppy)… Apparently a reference to Former Duke Cancer Researcher Anil Potti. [1][2] > …put egg on some Harvard Econ prof's faces - to the delight of the UMASS grad student that found it... Likely referring to the Reinhart/Rogoff spreadsheet error discovered by Thomas Herndon. [3] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Potti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Potti [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/anil-potti-duke-cancer-fraud-university-research_n_1273264.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/anil-potti-duke-can... [3] http://chronicle.com/article/UMass-Graduate-Student-Talks/138763/ http://chronicle.com/article/UMass-Graduate-Student-Talks/13...

by SeanDav 13y ago

kfk 13y ago

I have worked with Excel-based trading systems with tens of thousands of lines of VBA code Having worked with some VBA myself, this sounds like a very, very, scary statement.

davidgerard 13y ago
It is a scary statement, and it is true, and I have friends who write VBA handling millions of pounds, and they concur that you and I should be scared.

Perseids 13y ago

It is also amazing what can be done programming in brainfuck. That something is powerful enough to do the job does not mean that it is a good tool to do the job.

SeanDav 13y ago
Excel is used extensively in the financial and trading fields because for many situations (predominantly RAD and prototyping) it IS the best tool for the job. We are talking about companies with serious amounts of cash to throw around at anything that gives them the slightest edge and with some of the smartest people to work for them. They use Excel because for many situations there is nothing better. Of course the particular use case I mentioned was probably pushing Excel right to the edge of the envelope and the company was actively developing a .NET replacement for it because everyone recognized this. I have no idea how that turned out but I can say that the Excel system was very impressive and very functional.

johnminter 13y ago

Excel's major problem is the ease in which point/click/copy/paste generates errors. There have been several recent cases where off-by-one cell errors have caused authors issues. This was one part of the Duke scandal (the fraud was much worse, but the Excel was sloppy) and put egg on some Harvard Econ prof's faces - to the delight of the UMASS grad student that found it...

flogic 13y ago
That sloppiness is also it's core strength. It allows people without training to slice and dice data. The process is almost never pretty but they're "free" to compute.
tod222 13y ago
> This was one part of the Duke scandal (the fraud was much worse, but the Excel was sloppy)… Apparently a reference to Former Duke Cancer Researcher Anil Potti. [1][2] > …put egg on some Harvard Econ prof's faces - to the delight of the UMASS grad student that found it... Likely referring to the Reinhart/Rogoff spreadsheet error discovered by Thomas Herndon. [3] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Potti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anil_Potti [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/anil-potti-duke-cancer-fraud-university-research_n_1273264.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/anil-potti-duke-can... [3] http://chronicle.com/article/UMass-Graduate-Student-Talks/138763/ http://chronicle.com/article/UMass-Graduate-Student-Talks/13...