Slashdot Mirror
30th Anniversary of the (No Good) Spreadsheet
theodp writes "PC Magazine's John C. Dvorak offers his curmudgeonly take on the 30th anniversary of the spreadsheet, which Dvorak blames for elevating once lowly bean counters to the executive suite and enabling them to make some truly horrible decisions. But even if you believe that VisiCalc was the root-of-all-evil, as Dvorak claims, your geek side still has to admire it for the programming tour-de-force that it was, implemented in 32KB memory using the look-Ma-no-multiply-or-divide instruction set of the 1MHz 8-bit 6502 processor that powered the Apple II." On the brighter side, one of my favorite things about Visicalc is the widely repeated story that it was snuck into businesses on Apple machines bought under the guise of word processors, but covertly used for accounting instead.
I think spreadsheets evolved almost zero in the last 30 years. Word processing got fonts, colors... Excel is just VisiCalc with buttons.
Wrong. In the last 30 years, they've added everything from statistical functions, to greater programmability to data mining functions. Integration with SQL databases. Desktop publishing features.
And not to mention the most important advance in spreadsheets in 30 years.
Yep, that's right. Clippy!
*ducking*
My blog
Not true, start tagging the story diedvorakdie or ohnoitsdvorak.
It would be necessary for good journalists to create him?
(Sorry, Voltaire)
My blog
The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse'. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices. - Dvorak.
John C. Dvorak is the Ellsworth Toohey of the technology world.
"Its easier to blame the messenger, didn't you get the memo?"
Actually, I do blame Messenger for some problems.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
JACKASSERY DETECTED. Everything after your nick was unnecessary.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The spreadsheet was never invented????
Millions of secretaries -- I mean Admin Assistants -- would have to type department phone lists with word processors.
I am not a crackpot.
You had a lookup table for instructions? We had to try each value in turn until it did the right operation and then record the results by tying knots in bits of coax cable.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
The first step is always denial. I know it's hard, but you need to admit that you have a problem before you can start the healing process.
It looks like you are trying to make a standard Slashdot joke at Clippy's expense.
Would you like help?
Assembler! They were lucky to have assembler. We had t' code in hex, in 32 bytes of RAM, no screen and half the switches were missing!
Was thinking of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch
And thus became the first victim of failing to RTFM. "Back in the day" almost any book on machine language had these routines in them.
I get letters and "announcements" that are Excel documents for some reason.
Turns out the reason is because the user treats the cells as "Tabs" and uses them to "Center" text and "Indent" things, create "Columns"
These people have no clue how to use a Word Processor to format their document and they also have no clue how to use a Spreadsheet program for what it was intended for either.
I know someone else who treats a Spreadsheet like a Database.
Except what they have is a Text File in Excel Format.
No defined fields, can't sort because they typed the info in to "look good" but serial numbers are in Different Columns!
Line Breaks when they reached the end of their 17" screen really hoses the thing good.
Can't export the data to CSV or anything to make it useful elsewhere but "IT'S ALL STORED ON A SPREADSHEET!" which was the original mandate.
I like microcars
That's almost as bad as how somehow "worser" got into my spell-check dictionary and now I can type it without complaint!
Almost as bad? I'd say that's quite badder.
You don't actually use spreadsheets for anything do you?
I use databases like a big boy.
Multiply by 2 is easy using shifts (ASL or LSR do shift left or shift right, respectively). I don't really remember how to do anything other than multiply by 2, but I do remember BCC and BCS were the same as BHS and BLO respectively. Does JLE mean jump if less than or equal? If so, poster maybe meant BLE (branch if less than or equal).
Scary that I learned 6502 assembler at ~age 11 and still remember stuff about it (and haven't used it in 20+ years).
Hail Clippy, Our Dark Lord!
Hello! I noticed you are using Excel. Do you want to:
o Create a spreadsheet your admins have to fill in for some fire drill information gathering
o Create a CSV formatted file containing all of the employees to be laid off
o Create some graphs with completely meaningless data points
o Use this program as if it was a real database and not a glorified ledger book
Oh God yes.
Access has its place. There's a niche between 'Spreadsheet with rather a lot of VLOOKUPs' and 'Hire a professional DBA and developers', and Access fills it nicely.
Problems with both Access and Excel arise when they're pushed beyond what they're supposed to do. Excel workbooks like the one I described earlier ought to be Access databases. Access databases of the sort we hear of on /. - with their many gigabytes size and their multiple concurrent users - well, they ought to be properly maintained databases on their own server.
But however bad an Access database, at least there's usually only one of them. All the mess is in one place, and however badly designed the database at least it was designed, normally by one person, to some sort of rational scheme, however misguided. The job of fixing such a mess may be daunting but it can be done.
Where you find one awful Excel database - for a database is what it is when it gets this bad, sheets upon sheets VLOOKUPing each other, the same data presented a dozen different ways for ignorance of what a pivot table is for - you then discover an entire ecology of more horrible workbooks, a web of interdependencies and contradictory cross-references. Which rely on people taking copies, emailing them around, and pasting things back in. These things evolve. No one person comprehends the whole structure. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
It's a very ancient meme. The Ancient Greeks and Romans had stock characters of the scheming slave manipulating their foolish masters. I suppose in many ways the readers of slashdot are the galley slaves of the modern world. Joking takes people's minds off the fact that being on call is the modern equivalent of being chained to an oar.
So wait, you're saying your chains are metaphorical?
I need to talk with HR...
The enemies of Democracy are