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by dsjimi 2386 days ago
Excel is the world's most popular IDE ;)
1 comments

One of my weed out questions in programming interviews is to ask their opinion on Excel. Specifically, strengths and weaknesses.

If they don't come up with at least one strength or spend the whole answer bashing it, that's an instant reject for any position touching UX.

I could bash it in ways you probably haven't heard before...

The clashing paradigms of the Data Model and "vanilla" Excel have really been aggravating me recently.

I feel like Excel is underutilized for cultural reasons and it seems like it can do anything I was previously asked to use Qlikview for.

But the fundamental reason I am using Excel these days is because I don't want to be subjected to a programming interview, ever again.

I got my current job without any particular technical requirements, and the interview was entirely about how I manage my time and multitask.