Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by s_dev 1777 days ago
More than that it's outright stupid.

Look at what the UK tried to do their contact tracing program through an excel file. They ran in to problems at 80,000 entries because excel has limits and the whole thing fell apart during the peak of a pandemic. Spreadsheets are not Databases so don't use them as such -- thus "spreadsheets everywhere" isn't a good principal.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988

Author seems to acknowledge the limits of Spreadsheets but then says:

"So you’re saying we should use spreadsheets more?

Yes! The hardest part about building most software is figuring out the process."

!! I'm lost at this point !!

1 comments

That's the thing. It "works" just as long as filesize is under 200 MB, you don't need complex joins/queries/constraints and you don't make/allow for manual mistakes.

Suddenly out of the blue it doesn't work anymore. It's fine given you stay within scope and don't rely too much on it.