Dev by profession and hobby. Not a ton of time for hobbies these days though! Mom of two young kids. Also really into dog training (agility, nose-work, advanced obedience, etc) & reading fiction. 😃
Justin helps dev and product teams navigate the waters of mobile app development and is an expert at integrating them into larger technical, customer, and business ecosystems.
Passionate about building great technology and connecting with people to create positive change. Happy to answer questions about transitioning to tech. Find me on Twitter @lounecl
Excel is also great for cleaning up data! I use it whenever I need to change formatting for a list of records- remove spaces, add commas, etc
I also love Excel's concatenate feature, which comes in handing for quickly creating arrays and objects from strings. In terms of data handling, it definitely is the best quick tool to use
I graduated in 1990 in Electrical Engineering and since then I have been in university, doing research in the field of DSP. To me programming is more a tool than a job.
The only database that the average person can use without training
Should an untrained person use a database?
This is a kind of advocacy that I hear a lot. "If you use MySQL (or any other DB) you cannot ask your secretary to manage a data base" This sounds to me like "If you use a dentist drill you cannot ask your children to cure your cavities"
The only database that the average person can use without training
I don't have any training. I can't use Excel, aside from filling in values and clicking together basic equations with the GUI. Can I use Excel? Yes. Can I do anything useful with it? No.
I think I get where you are coming from here: Excel is probably easier to learn for non-technical people than other tools for data manipulation and statistics, such as R or Python. But you'd still need training to properly utilize Excel.
Handles gigantic data volumes with extreme efficiency
That is one argument I don't subscribe to at all, I'm with Michiel Hendriks on this one. Everything over ~2500 columns, without complex macros or anything, and you'll wait for it to load way longer than what feels necessary.
A non-negotiable dependency of almost every industry and profession
Aside from the fact that this doesn't say anything about the quality of the software, that's not because of Excel per se, or the lack of alternatives, but a result of Microsoft massively and successfully pushing it for decades.
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
What would you use instead? The problem that Project tries to solve has always struck me as a pretty tricky one. Not that I've looked in a long time, but I've not seen a better solution.
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
It's more the history/lore behind the project (if people working at Microsoft at the time of its initial release are to be believed).
That said, it's a horribly misused piece of software. Seems like 90% of the people that decide to use it (and not much smaller percentage of the people that should know how to use it) actually know how to use it effectively.
It does not handle large volumes of data. I cannot get it to process a simple 50MiB CSV file on my desktop without it freezing for a while.
It does not understand timestamps/dates property. It assumes you have a record for every minute, otherwise 14:01 and 14:35 are put next to each other.
It does not properly handle numbers. Internally everything is stores as a IEEE double.
If a cell contains only digits, and assumes it is a number even though it cannot handle it. "000005234523453249587234985" is simply ruined.
It is the main competitor of a lot of specialized software. I work on software for the logistics sector, a big competitor of our business is MS Excel. If you ever wonder why things went wrong with your online order, there is a fair chance some company used Excel, and messed something up.
It is too easy to use, but too hard to use. It's like MS Paint with numbers.
PS, LibreOffice Calc does not solve many of those issues.
PPS, If somebody knows something between MS Excel and R to handle larger data sets to plot some graphs, please tell me.
I see a lot of these as productive compromises rather than bugs, but interesting thoughts in any case. It turns out that all software is built on compromises, even Excel.
If a cell contains only digits, and assumes it is a number even though it cannot handle it. "000005234523453249587234985" is simply ruined.
A quick note on this: If you input '000005234523453249587234985 into the cell it will store as a string and maintain the leading 0's. This is a pain for working with, but does make the numbers display nicely.
I recently found out about this because a user was inputting numbers like this and breaking a formula later on the page 🙃
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Microsoft Excel. Seriously.
I know someone who can do anything in Excel, like with macros
ooo yes good one
I discovered Excel a while ago and it blew my mind :)
I basically have no idea how to actually use excel 😄
I agree with you, but I still never wrapped my head around how to use this piece of software effectively...
I was not a big Excel user until Joel Spolsky taught me a few things. youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c
I started using it (and Google Sheets) more and more learning just how powerful and expressive they are.
As you said, there's lots to discover.
Just gonna leave this here pics.me.me/life-of-a-software-engi...
Excel is also great for cleaning up data! I use it whenever I need to change formatting for a list of records- remove spaces, add commas, etc
I also love Excel's concatenate feature, which comes in handing for quickly creating arrays and objects from strings. In terms of data handling, it definitely is the best quick tool to use
Should an untrained person use a database?
This is a kind of advocacy that I hear a lot. "If you use MySQL (or any other DB) you cannot ask your secretary to manage a data base" This sounds to me like "If you use a dentist drill you cannot ask your children to cure your cavities"
I don't have any training. I can't use Excel, aside from filling in values and clicking together basic equations with the GUI. Can I use Excel? Yes. Can I do anything useful with it? No.
I think I get where you are coming from here: Excel is probably easier to learn for non-technical people than other tools for data manipulation and statistics, such as R or Python. But you'd still need training to properly utilize Excel.
That is one argument I don't subscribe to at all, I'm with Michiel Hendriks on this one. Everything over ~2500 columns, without complex macros or anything, and you'll wait for it to load way longer than what feels necessary.
Aside from the fact that this doesn't say anything about the quality of the software, that's not because of Excel per se, or the lack of alternatives, but a result of Microsoft massively and successfully pushing it for decades.
At least you didn't say "MS Project". :p
What would you use instead? The problem that Project tries to solve has always struck me as a pretty tricky one. Not that I've looked in a long time, but I've not seen a better solution.
It's more the history/lore behind the project (if people working at Microsoft at the time of its initial release are to be believed).
That said, it's a horribly misused piece of software. Seems like 90% of the people that decide to use it (and not much smaller percentage of the people that should know how to use it) actually know how to use it effectively.
Hard disagree. It's over appreciated.
PS, LibreOffice Calc does not solve many of those issues.
PPS, If somebody knows something between MS Excel and R to handle larger data sets to plot some graphs, please tell me.
I see a lot of these as productive compromises rather than bugs, but interesting thoughts in any case. It turns out that all software is built on compromises, even Excel.
A quick note on this: If you input
'000005234523453249587234985into the cell it will store as a string and maintain the leading 0's. This is a pain for working with, but does make the numbers display nicely.I recently found out about this because a user was inputting numbers like this and breaking a formula later on the page 🙃