I was compelled to explain in a large training session that Excel and MathCAD are not, Not, NOT acceptable tools for performing QL-1 nuclear safety calculations.
I absolutely hate that I have to keep explaining this to degreed engineers doing safety-critical work.
This just makes me want to cry.
Excel is suitable only for tasks less important than Girl Scout cookie sales tracking. Do not bet anything more valuable than a box of Thin Mints on Excel.
@arclight
Excel is not a spreadsheet. Excel is a full-featured virtual machine running a smalltalk-inspired REPL whose display layer happens to resemble a spreadsheet.
Something like a third of the world’s money goes through Excel every single day, and the reason you don’t think Excel is a Real Programming Language is because if we admitted that, we’d have to admit that most of the most important software in the world was written by underpaid women in pink collar jobs, and we can’t have that.
@arclight my guy, you just referred to excel as a child’s toy only suitable for tasks less important than girl guide cookie sales and then referred me to your wife as the family excel expert.
Just tell her how little you think of her, don’t involve me in this.
@mhoye I think you're really misunderstanding what I'm saying and that we're probably in furious agreement.
My wife works in emergency management and is regularly called on for complex Excel tasks. She is _literally_ the Excel expert in the household.
It's not that I consider Excel a toy, I consider it a tool used far outside of its intended scope of use by people who are not treated as programmers, not given adequate training or tools for their work. That's a problem.
@arclight "Excel is suitable only for tasks less important than Girl Scout cookie sales tracking."
Even if you're right about nuclear safety calculations - you might be! - a statement like this is on a par with arguing that for safety reasons, the database should be blue.
@mhoye I am biased, insomuch as I was a minor when I was first using Excel at version 1.0.
My dad used to have me write spreadsheets for his business. Unpaid of course (or risk being beaten & not having a roof over my head).
So while I sympathize with the un(der)rpaid part: please don't emasculate me, I contended with enough of that BS.
Excel has *limits*.
1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns
Maximum file size for uploading to a document library: 50 (MB) default. 2 (GB) maximum
@arclight
@mhoye Contrast that with say, a "real" database.
I'll be kind & use SQLite: "The largest possible setting for SQLITE_MAX_PAGE_COUNT is 4294967294. When used with the maximum page size of 65536, this gives a maximum SQLite database size of about 281 terabytes."
So, no Excel is not suitable for "serious" work.
A lot of things are done in Excel.
Yet if you have more rigorous CS issues, please provide code with COMPLETE source.
That disqualifies basically EVERYTHING from M$, period.
@arclight
@arclight Excel isn't even ACID compliant.
You're not the only one calling out how it being misused leads to all kinds of problems either, also see:
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/opinions/improving-data-integrity-wake-excel-controversy/
CSVs can be useful for lots of things very easy to twiddle with on a command line with sed, awk, tr, cut, grep, etc.
That doesn't mean that they are wise for many other use cases where more stringent methodologies should be considered.
There was, awhile ago now, a report out of Wall Street to the effect that any non-trivial spreadsheet is buggy in some important way, and while they had had every motivation and a lot of money to throw at the problem they just could not fix it.
Code is only as good as your tests, and it's nigh-impossible to test your Excel code.
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