[commandlinefan]

I think he means a spreadsheet for the purposes of tracking software project progress. Although honestly, if you have a spreadsheet that's longer-lived than a few hours, you should probably evaluate whether you're adopting the best approach.

[MattGaiser]

If you are not a developer, spreadsheets are a tool that lets you get similar capability in many cases. It is basically no-code for accountants, portfolio managers, and non software engineers.

[commandlinefan]

Cool. If you have a spreadsheet that's longer-lived than a few hours, you should probably evaluate whether you're adopting the best approach. You can replace a blown fuse with a penny, too, but you should probably call an electrician instead.

[xmprt]

Building/buying a new tool for a job that a spreadsheet can do just as easily because of your hard rule on long-lived spreadsheets feels like a huge waste of company resources.

Your penny analogy is contrived because a penny isn't remotely close to working like a fuse and a mistake can be deadly. No one is going to die if you use a spreadsheet instead of Jira for project tracking.

[httpsterio]

> Cool. If you have a spreadsheet that's longer-lived than a few hours, you should probably evaluate whether you're adopting the best approach. You can replace a blown fuse with a penny, too, but you should probably call an electrician instead.

or just replace the fuse with a fuse? If you have a spreadsheet and it works for you, why spend time getting a programmer to "do it properly"?

one of the largest Finnish waste disposal companies has a no-code product that runs in excel basically and rakes them millions a year.

[pillefitz]

Excel + VBA is insanely powerful, and except for the IDE a surprisingly good dev experience. I would have never thought if I my client hadn't insisted..