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The First Rule of Microsoft Excel -- Don't Tell Anyone You're Good at It (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: When Anand Kalelkar started a new job at a large insurance company, colleagues flooded him with instant messages and emails and rushed to introduce themselves in the cafeteria. He soon learned his newfound popularity came with strings attached. Strings of code. Many of Mr. Kalelkar's co-workers had heard he was a wizard at Microsoft Excel and were seeking his help in taming unruly spreadsheets and pivot tables gone wrong.
[...] Excel buffs are looking to lower their profiles. Since its introduction in 1985 by Microsoft Corp., the spreadsheet program has grown to hundreds of millions of users world-wide. It has simplified countless office tasks once done by hand or by rudimentary computer programs, streamlining the work of anyone needing to balance a budget, draw a graph or crunch company earnings. Advanced users can perform such feats as tracking the expenditures of thousands of employees. At the same time, it has complicated the lives of the office Excel Guy or Gal, the virtuosos whose superior skills at writing formula leave them fighting an endless battle against the circular references, merged cells and mangled macros left behind by their less savvy peers.
"If someone tells you that they âjust have a few Excel sheets' that they want help with, run the other way," tweeted 32-year-old statistician Andrew Althouse. "Also, you may want to give them a fake phone number, possibly a fake name. It may be worth faking your own death, in extreme circumstances." The few Excel sheets in question, during one recent encounter, turned out to have 400 columns each, replete with mismatched terms and other coding no-nos, said Mr. Althouse, who works at the University of Pittsburgh. The project took weeks to straighten out.
[...] Excel buffs are looking to lower their profiles. Since its introduction in 1985 by Microsoft Corp., the spreadsheet program has grown to hundreds of millions of users world-wide. It has simplified countless office tasks once done by hand or by rudimentary computer programs, streamlining the work of anyone needing to balance a budget, draw a graph or crunch company earnings. Advanced users can perform such feats as tracking the expenditures of thousands of employees. At the same time, it has complicated the lives of the office Excel Guy or Gal, the virtuosos whose superior skills at writing formula leave them fighting an endless battle against the circular references, merged cells and mangled macros left behind by their less savvy peers.
"If someone tells you that they âjust have a few Excel sheets' that they want help with, run the other way," tweeted 32-year-old statistician Andrew Althouse. "Also, you may want to give them a fake phone number, possibly a fake name. It may be worth faking your own death, in extreme circumstances." The few Excel sheets in question, during one recent encounter, turned out to have 400 columns each, replete with mismatched terms and other coding no-nos, said Mr. Althouse, who works at the University of Pittsburgh. The project took weeks to straighten out.
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100% agree. Any excel sheet that complicated that someone needs "help" with it, doesn't belong in excel.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2005-...
The over-use of Excel is a result of the under-use of real programming languages, and real developers. This is a CHRONIC problem in corporations all over the world.
Here's what happens:
Some Guy 15 years ago hacked up an excel spreadsheet to do a rudimentary task. Some Guy left 10 years ago, and now it's grown into a series of terrible, horrible hacks over the last 10 years. Corporations finds Some Guy 2, and wants him to look through the horrible code that now exists and "fix it", or "make it do new thing 2". It's the same thing that happens to all software, but far worse.
It's bad enough when it's in a real programming language written by a trained developer. it's 100 times worse when it's written in Excel, and written by a neophyte developer. We had these things all over the place at my last workplace. One of them pulled from a database and created dozens and dozens of database connections each time it interacted with anything. The thing was a nightmare, and we did eventually kill it. But it existed for yeaaars doing god knows what.
Some people just have 10,000 rows of data and its kinda overkill to put that small dataset into a database.
I completely disagree. It's overkill to be using excel for 10,000 rows of data. Why are you using a spreadsheet when you have that much data? It's completely the wrong tool. Spend a little time and learn a new tool! SQL doesn't mean having to store it on a server somewhere.
Excel is a like a chisel being used as a screwdriver
At one time, it was a very nice chisel. It was sharp, held a nice edge, and would even make nice cuts on the end-grain of soft wood like pine.
Then someone needed a screwdriver to open something. Nothing major, just a simple turn. It will only take a second.
Now the chisel has one rounded corner (the other has a nasty barb because they dropped it on the concrete), several large nicks, a chunk missing on one side, and the bevel isn't even square.
What was 10-seconds with a strop to get it back in line, is now an hours worth of work - and that's after putting it on a power grinder to get the nicks and chips out of it.
Point being, Excel is good for something, and lousy for others. R is good for somethings, and difficult and overkill for others. Complex regression? Definitely. Just adding a couple of columns - no matter how long - not worth the overhead.
Like anyone good at any profession - it's knowing the tools of the trade, what they are good for, passable, and lousy at. Selecting the appropriate one for the job, and keeping your skills up to date.
The unfortunately thing is, few folks want to learn anything new, everyone's looking for a magic bullet, and view everything as a one-time one-off effort - without realizing that this will be on-going for many months.
Until behavior surrounding tools improves, Excel will continue to be king of the hill in this regards.
Simple answer: Excel with sheets linked to database tables.
You only have to show the good ones, once. A database is the place to store any data big enough that you have to filter and/or sort before looking. IMHO anything more than about 100 rows belongs in a table, not on a sheet.
It also helps to demystify databases. If an accounting type can setup a worksheet, he can setup a table. It won't be a good design, but who cares? Hopefully it will have an index.
You won't want to give them access to any database server that's 'live'. Build them their own. They will make mistakes. But don't let them run local, or the data won't get backed up.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Point being, Excel is good for something, and lousy for others. R is good for somethings, and difficult and overkill for others.
You misunderstand why I'd steer them to R. Somehow you've got the impression I want to help them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm not a programmer or a system administrator. I'm a bit of a power-user and a trouble-shooter. I tend to master what I find useful. Back in 2003, I found use for Excel (pivot tables, specifically) for a hobby and from thereon out, it was a massive boon to me at work.
Today, having mentored a couple dozen interns and entry-level employees, I can tell you that teaching THEM pivot tables, data norming/data cleaning, and the like has made them extremely competitive in the job market. I tell them, "What I will teach you will not only get you instant interest when submitting an application, but will help make you indispensable to most organizations."
So ya, if your time is too valuable to help someone in Excel, don't tell them you're competent. But if you want to get a job or help others get jobs, learn and train others in the standard formulae (IF/Then, Count, etc.), more complex formulae (Vlookup, Index/Match, etc.), how to clean up data quickly, and pivot tables.
Many (many) years ago, my mom told me, "Don't put how many words per minute you can type on your resume unless you want to get a job as a typist."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
> "Since its introduction in 1985....... Excel has simplified countless office tasks once done by hand or by rudimentary computer programs, streamlining the work of anyone needing to balance a budget, draw a graph or crunch company earnings."
Wow it's a miracle!
Nah I'm pretty sure computer spreadsheets existed before 1985. Like WordPerfect's Quatro and Lotus 1-2-3
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Some people just have 10,000 rows of data and its kinda overkill to put that small dataset into a database.
How is that "overkill"? After all, Excell IS a database, just very heavyweight and with weak features. 10,000 rows is 200 screen pages. It is insane to try to process something like that with fragile macros.
Whip up a Python script to slurp it into a CSV file, run error and consistency checks, and then insert it into an SQL database. Run your updates and queries, then slurp it back into CSV, and insert it back into Excel. This is powerful, robust, and will give you solid job security, since no one else will have a clue what you are doing.
Why are you using a spreadsheet when you have that much data?
Because we don't have a license for an SQL server or an IT department prepared to support a free one. Duh.
So you can afford a license for MS Excel but not pay nothing for SQLite or PostgreSQL?
Oh, I "forgot" you said you had no IT department to help you with the free one... But you have an IT department helping you with all your Excel problems?
Or you don't? How the **** are you handling all the Excel problems then? If you don't have any, great, your workplace seems to be a place full of Excel wizards. But if they are, they should be able to learn how to use a SQL-engine/server without much trouble.
Learn to use the right tool for the job instead of using shitty tools. After the initial period of learning you will wonder why you were such complete and utter idiots for all those years, when you could have done real work instead in a fraction of the time and with much less headache from trying to debug poorly designed spreadsheets.
SQL doesn't mean having to store it on a server somewhere.
Yes, it does. If the SQL server software happens to be running on your desktop then it's a server, especially if you expect other people to access the data.
No, SQLite is "server-less", so there are options if you don't want "servers".
But servers aren't something evil, why are you so obsessed with not having servers? You are right in that any computer serving something to clients are technically servers. But in reality when you talk about servers you mostly mean dedicated servers, servers which is not used as a workstation for someone else.
My computer at my old work was always turned on, so for a while I ran FileMaker to share data with my coworkers, and later my PostgreSQL server which replaced FileMaker on it. When everyone realized it was really helpful to share date we got it a new home on a "real server". But those can be pretty much anything with a little computing power. Heck, you could run PostgreSQL on a Raspberry Pi if you wanted something that is out of the way, doesn't draw much power and doesn't generates noise. I wouldn't recommend it, but there are all kinds of solutions, and I bet you have some computers unused somewhere that could be used.
If you have machines capable of running Excel, you can sure as heck let them run some kind of SQL-server.