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by UnoriginalGuy 4805 days ago
Unless you write SQL queries that use stored procedures or pre-calculated results tables, and then you just wind up in the same situation as Excel.

I mean Excel is at its heart a query language. So your logic equally applies to Excel, why not write a massive query in Excel that does all the calculations in one go so you can see the inner workings?

All you're really doing is playing musical chairs with the data. SQL query language for Excel query language, and data moved from tables to worksheets.

As I said earlier, unless there are procedural changes upstream nothing will change. A tool is just a tool. You can use it in a way to minimise mistakes, or not. Humans are the weak point.

Now there are tools that automatically identify common mistakes but neither Excel or SQL/relational database engines are in that class.
1 comments
dspeyer 4805 days ago
> I mean Excel is at its heart a query language. So your logic equally applies to Excel

The least readable query language ever. Instead of names, everything must be addressed as column,row. Imagine a C program that instead of declaring variables with sane names as needed, simply created a large array of each type and used constant numeric indecies. That's what Excel requires.

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UnoriginalGuy 4805 days ago
Excel cells have been nameable since forever... It also has supported types since forever. I'm literally talking Excel 2000 or older functionality[1][2].

With respect do you even know how to use Excel? Because everything you just said is incorrect.

[1] http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000704.htm

[2] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/274504

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jeltz 4805 days ago
Anecdotally I have to strongly disagree here.

Only one of the tens of heavy users of Excel I have worked with know of this feature on others like it. I am not a heavy use of Excel but my theory is that this is due to a failure of explanation by the software. Excel does not by its design encourage good coding, and most of the users of Excel do not have any programming background so they do not realize that these features should even be there so they wont know to look it up in the manual.

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eigenvector 4804 days ago
And it's easy to write horrifically bad, but working, code in C or C++. How exactly do you propose Excel butt into your workflow to expose advanced features?

If you plan to use Excel to aid you in making serious money (as countless business do), can't you fork out a thousand extra for an employee who actually knows how to use Excel properly?

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andreasvc 4805 days ago
Naming a single cell doesn't solve the problem of accidentally using a different range of values. In a normal programming language you would define a variable such as GDP containing a list of values for the countries of interest, in Excel every formula has to restate the range, which is what caused the mistake.
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LyndsySimon 4804 days ago
That's not the case.

You can have named ranges in Excel - in fact, you can have named ranges which are dynamically calculated based on a formula.

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