| I am a counter example to your assessment. I can definetly code, but I wip up spreadsheets often. > If there is a use case for spreadsheets that is not better served by some real code, I'm interested to hear what it is. Sharing information with non-coders could be an obvious one. I could have done a database with my wife's sewing patterns collection, of which she has ~300. Instead, I did a spreadsheet in google docs, which she's very familiar with. Told her how to enter data there (4 fields, name, file, tags and picture) and there's a couple tabs that allow her to filter things out, etc. Then she can do whatever she wants with it, like using conditional formatting to make dress patterns red. It was done in 2-3 hours, and she got exactly what she wanted. I worked in a place where both the input and output was spreadsheets, and the users were spreadsheet users. We did implement a database for this particular one for the heavy algorithmic part, but a lot of the business logic (e.g. initial data validation, final presentation of the results) lived on the spreadsheets themselves. Another interesting one is data-to-visual time. Unless you happen to be proficient in a particular area of programming (e.g. front programming with proficiency in something like D3, or R programmer) getting decent graphs out of data is a chore when going the programming route. With spreadsheets, you put the columns and get the graphs essentially for free. To me spreadsheets are just another tool in the toolbox; they are appropriate for some tasks. They can definitely be misused and abused. Knowing which occasion is which is where experience comes in. |
You can do the exact same thing with code. You can still output reports and diagrams, and literally anything the "customer/user" wants.
> I could have done a database with my wife's sewing patterns collection...
Your example is a good one. I didn't think of images.
> It was done in 2-3 hours, and she got exactly what she wanted.
Fair enough. A spreadsheet was probably the right tool for the job in this case. But if she ever wanted more features, and the complexity increased, I don't know if it still would be.
> I worked in a place where both the input and output was spreadsheets, and the users were spreadsheet users.
Okay, but should they have been? Would custom software not have been the better solution?
> a lot of the business logic (e.g. initial data validation, final presentation of the results) lived on the spreadsheets themselves.
When I think of "business logic", "data validation", and "final presentation", a spreadsheet is one of the last tools I'd reach for.
> Another interesting one is data-to-visual time. Unless you happen to be proficient in a particular area of programming (e.g. front programming with proficiency in something like D3, or R programmer) getting decent graphs out of data is a chore when going the programming route. With spreadsheets, you put the columns and get the graphs essentially for free.
I also disagree with this. I am very much a back-end developer. But using something like GNUplot or a library like matplotlib is pretty easy for outputting a nice looking graph from tabular data.
> To me spreadsheets are just another tool in the toolbox; they are appropriate for some tasks. They can definitely be misused and abused. Knowing which occasion is which is where experience comes in.
I agree with this. But I guess the difference is I can think of almost no circumstances where it's the better tool for a coder.