Over the years, I've seen many comments dismissing Excel. But as many people who've worked in enterprises know, Excel is a godsend for manipulating reams of data for non-programmers who can think analytically. Of course, complex formulae and extensive VBA functions become a tech debt over time. But implemented properly, it provides a solution which doesn't require huge management approvals and increases productivity.
I'm sure that these new features will find a lot of use amongst many people. And seeing these Excel innovations is heartening.
The other aspects is the new generation doesn't understand it. During interviews in marketing but also for a medical field expert, I often ask "make a small budget so you'll see how your bonus will work", and even the PhD, which is the top academic level, couldn't use a basic formula. How do they deal with data during a PhD? "In Prism", she said.
Same for marketing students and, although it's a lower academic level, they still need Excel for prospect lists.
I'm one of those. Excel's ease of use isn't relevant if you already know how to use Python / Jupyter / DuckDB / whatever.
The mental model of describing a series of reproducible transformations on normalized tables is more intuitive to me.
Excel lets you do too many things. As a result, I mostly see spreadsheets that aren't much more machine-parsanle than a word document.
We had to write a score-table at a party lately, and a while ago, and I managed to get it working with DataSpell faster, than it took us to figure out how Google Sheets stupid date-parsing works.
thunderbong · · focus · HN ↗
I'm sure that these new features will find a lot of use amongst many people. And seeing these Excel innovations is heartening.
eastbound · · focus · HN ↗
Same for marketing students and, although it's a lower academic level, they still need Excel for prospect lists.
SebastianKra · · focus · HN ↗
The mental model of describing a series of reproducible transformations on normalized tables is more intuitive to me.
Excel lets you do too many things. As a result, I mostly see spreadsheets that aren't much more machine-parsanle than a word document.
We had to write a score-table at a party lately, and a while ago, and I managed to get it working with DataSpell faster, than it took us to figure out how Google Sheets stupid date-parsing works.
grayclhn · · focus · HN ↗