[benhurmarcel]

> I have converted excel spreadsheets built over years to SQL, and typically it did not take weeks to do that.

The "years" of work are typically not for implementing the spreadsheet, but to define what it does. The requirements evolve over many versions.

Of course it's fast to re-implement it after all the work to define the requirement is done, but it's only possible because Excel allowed all those prototypes.

[beefield]

Grandparent claimed that something done in excel by one person in a week takes a team of five and half a year to reimplement in some other language. I disagree with that as a general rule (of course, exceptions may apply, as usual).

I fully agree that Excel is great for quick drafting, visualizing data quickly, and prototyping. But it should be left there. Anything you do that lasts even overnight and has any significant numbers in it should be done with something else than Excel.

[benhurmarcel]

Fair enough, the issues for me are that: once something works in a spreadsheet there are no money assigned and willpower to redo it clean in something else, because most of the value is already there; and the people who are available and know the requirements aren’t skilled in anything else.

So prototypes are done in Excel because it’s the fastest and cheapest way to do it, and they don’t get redone in something else afterwards for the reasons above.

[tomnipotent]

> done in excel by one person in a week

Done by a domain expert in their field. If you had to create the project from scratch without aid of an existing Excel file to clone, you would not be able to do it even remotely as quickly as the domain expert, if at all.