[krapht]

I'll just quote Soustrup here: "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses." In particular you see the spreadsheet GUI as a downfall, but I think it is a great enabler that has allowed millions of non-programmers to create useful programs.

[ramblenode]

I would counter with "use the right tool for the job."

Excel is great at churning out fast and dirty estimates for low impact work. The problem is when it's used for large, complex, or important problems because these are just not Excel's domain--something obvious when looking at the kinds of features and bug fixes MS has prioritized over the years.

[cm2187]

I think the Excel team disagrees with you. I remember having even seen an Excel demo about big data on channel9 (apparently if it fits in a spreadsheet, it is still big data!).

Based on the evolution of Excel, they clearly see it as a data analysis tool only, with lots of iterations of the pivot tables functionality. And clearly not as a modeling tool.

My guess on Excel usage is that it is 10% of the time used for data analysis (pivot tables, time series analysis), 20% of the time used to create a simple table (planning for the week by non technical people), and 70% of the time used for modelling (business plan, tax calculations, accounting, pricing financial instruments, running an inventory, calculating something scientific/mathematic, etc). Most companies are run on Excel.

For instance one thing where Excel sucks at one of its core functionalities is linking a powerpoint presentation to an Excel model. Any consultant, expert, banker, accountant, salesperson or marketer will do that all day. You can paste a table as a linked image but the formatting will be completely unstable and it is very dodgy. And no way to link a number in a textbox to Excel. Microsoft should focus on these problems rather than yet another pivot table functionality.

Though office seems to be frozen time. I can't think of any major new feature since Office 2007.

[7952]

It is damning that you cannot use a basic computer tool for anything that is large, complex, or important. Isn't that exactly what computers are for? Call me idealistic but I want a spreadhseet that can handle milions of rows. Maybe add a "strict" mode to keep people out of trouble.

[cm2187]

You could have an option to disable any formatting in a tab, and then Excel should be able to handle a billion rows in that tab. But you can't have all the flexibility of Excel on a massive scale. Even a laptop today is insanely fast and has an insane amount of memory.

[arethuza]

PowerPivot in Excel does allow you to have millions of rows in tables - mind you that isn't in the standard spreadsheet functionality, but it is there.

[Rapzid]

Excel is used HEAVILY at all levels of business for large, complex, and important things. I'm curious what this right tool is that they should be using instead.

[gaius]

Python with a good DAG library, e.g. https://github.com/manahl/mdf (but there are plenty of others kicking around).

What this lets you do is in Python build networks of computations then change one value and it will cascade through the rest of your model, exactly like you do in Excel, but in actual code that can easily be versioned, reused, etc.

[ethan_g]

Java, for example.

Yes, it's true Excel is used for a lot of big important things, but I'd agree with GP it's not very good at them. Moreover, I think most people who use Excel for big important things, would agree it's not good for it--they get stuck in that situation when a small spreadsheet grows big over the years. Lack of version control, limited modularity, and no ability to unit test make large spreadsheets error-prone, and Excel tends to barf on you when you push it too hard (seems to be a number of crash bugs and performance bugs that never get fixed).

Excel is incredibly productive for quick analysis and making charts. But it's really not a development platform and it's really not for heavy lifting.

[TeMPOraL]

The primary reason Java (and other programming languages) aren't, and won't be used instead of Excel is that Excel is interactive. About the closest you can get to that with a programming language is Lisp, but it's still half-way there compared to a spreadsheet, when you can see the data all the time as it is placed and updated.

The second big reason is that Excel just works, and all programming languages usually require installing tons of bullshit - editors, toolchains, whatever - to be able to work somewhat conveniently in them, and the moment any link in the bullshit chain crashes, you're SOL if you're not a developer. Yeah, we sometimes underestimate just how much minutiae knowledge we have that allows us to fix random problems in our tools without even thinking for a second about it.

So maybe Excel is unfit for purpose, but it's still the most fit for purpose tool available.

[wtbob]

> About the closest you can get to that with a programming language is Lisp, but it's still half-way there compared to a spreadsheet, when you can see the data all the time as it is placed and updated.

I think that Kenny Tilton's Cells was an attempt to get that sort of interactive update functionality in Lisp. I was never able to figure it out though.

[contravariant]

Using Java probably won't help you with the numerical issues though, unless you happen to use a good statistical library.

[cm2187]

In fact a lot could be said of the millions of ways to shoot oneself in the foot with programming languages. Excel being visual (the formula is evaluated/tested immediatly after being entered), I'd argue a diligent user will make less mistakes with Excel than while coding.

[ethan_g]

This is true for small spreadsheets, and one reason why I love Excel for quick analyses. Debugging is nearly instant because you see the results as you go along. But it doesn't scale very well.

--If you want to re-use a formula, you basically have to copy-paste it. Generally there isn't much modularity. Programmers are well aware of the dangers of this.

--It's also not a friendly platform for writing regression tests (possible with VB, but who does that?).

--The two-dimensional nature of the spreadsheets and lack of loops means you often need to do hacky stuff to emulate multidimensional arrays or loops. Easy to make mistakes here.

[KMag]

> Excel being visual (the formula is evaluated/tested immediatly after being entered)

We generally call this "interactive" and not "visual", in order to avoid confusion with graphical programming languages.

I agree that being interactive probably helps rapid iteration, debugging, and experimentation. However, Excel could still be interactive without being so fast and loose with types, accurate display of numbers, and many of the other faults others have pointed out.

Also, if you're trying to make some subtle point about the reduced severity of mistakes, you mean "lesser" rather than "less", otherwise you mean "fewer". https://duckduckgo.com/?q=less+vs+fewer

[10198231001]

If the programs contain errors, they are not useful. They appear to be useful to someone who just wants to see some activity instead of actual work.

[coldtea]

All programs contain errors, and almost all output of calculations is approximate.

The question is if for most of the use cases the margin of error is just fine...