<story><title>I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)</title><url>https://www.reifyworks.com/writing/2017-01-25-i-was-wrong-about-spreadsheets-and-im-sorry</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Xelbair</author><text>I just hate one single thing about Excel - all function names are localized - and in case of my native language - they are horrible and inconsistent.</text></item><item><author>halfeatenpie</author><text>I work in critical infrastructure planning. My organization builds software in R, Python, and other programming languages customized for these major organizations.&lt;p&gt;So many critical infrastructures, billions of dollars in planning, and just systems are built out of Excel.  It&amp;#x27;s amazing.  You&amp;#x27;d assume something that services millions of people a day would have some more sophisticated and customized solution, but you&amp;#x27;re wrong.&lt;p&gt;The reason is because most people know how to use Excel.  Most people know how to handle it, use it, modify it, build up from it.  You don&amp;#x27;t need to get a regular support contract from a company for your custom-built spreadsheets.  If something critical in that &amp;quot;Excel software stack&amp;quot; breaks (aka Microsoft Excel), most of the time you just need to reset Excel.  It&amp;#x27;s amazing.  You don&amp;#x27;t need a new server, you don&amp;#x27;t need support contracts, it&amp;#x27;s just like riding a bike.&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the limitation of Excel is actually when it comes to big-data analytics.  The way Excel handles large quantities of data is slow (due to the nature of it&amp;#x27;s software structure).  That&amp;#x27;s where we come in and build out these models and systems.  However, in the end, our data outputs will be fed back into Excel, because that&amp;#x27;s what most people are used to.&lt;p&gt;I have deep respect for Excel.  After all, Excel empowers so many users who don&amp;#x27;t know how to code to provide amazing plots and perform major calculations with ease.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>franga2000</author><text>While I haven&amp;#x27;t encountered localized names, localized formats make Excel an absolute pain for me.&lt;p&gt;My language uses the &amp;quot;European&amp;quot; number format of a comma for decimals and periods for thousands separators. Excel tries to adjust to that by using semicolons for argument separators (i.e. ADD(1.5, 3.5) -&amp;gt; ADD(1,5; 3,5)).&lt;p&gt;The problem is that their locale detection is wildly inconsistent and there isn&amp;#x27;t a good way to override it without changing system settings. When moving a file between computers, this is an utter disaster.</text></comment>
<story><title>I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)</title><url>https://www.reifyworks.com/writing/2017-01-25-i-was-wrong-about-spreadsheets-and-im-sorry</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Xelbair</author><text>I just hate one single thing about Excel - all function names are localized - and in case of my native language - they are horrible and inconsistent.</text></item><item><author>halfeatenpie</author><text>I work in critical infrastructure planning. My organization builds software in R, Python, and other programming languages customized for these major organizations.&lt;p&gt;So many critical infrastructures, billions of dollars in planning, and just systems are built out of Excel.  It&amp;#x27;s amazing.  You&amp;#x27;d assume something that services millions of people a day would have some more sophisticated and customized solution, but you&amp;#x27;re wrong.&lt;p&gt;The reason is because most people know how to use Excel.  Most people know how to handle it, use it, modify it, build up from it.  You don&amp;#x27;t need to get a regular support contract from a company for your custom-built spreadsheets.  If something critical in that &amp;quot;Excel software stack&amp;quot; breaks (aka Microsoft Excel), most of the time you just need to reset Excel.  It&amp;#x27;s amazing.  You don&amp;#x27;t need a new server, you don&amp;#x27;t need support contracts, it&amp;#x27;s just like riding a bike.&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the limitation of Excel is actually when it comes to big-data analytics.  The way Excel handles large quantities of data is slow (due to the nature of it&amp;#x27;s software structure).  That&amp;#x27;s where we come in and build out these models and systems.  However, in the end, our data outputs will be fed back into Excel, because that&amp;#x27;s what most people are used to.&lt;p&gt;I have deep respect for Excel.  After all, Excel empowers so many users who don&amp;#x27;t know how to code to provide amazing plots and perform major calculations with ease.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>qwerty456127</author><text>+1000. This is ridiculous. Couldn&amp;#x27;t they at least make this optional so you&amp;#x27;d be able to switch this off somewhere in the configuration dialog, registry or command line? I hate localized apps altogether (who even needs localized Visual Studio srsly? I can&amp;#x27;t believe anybody can be competent in a .Net programming language and relevant frameworks and practices without being able to read English) but localizning some apps makes some sense for some people, nevertheless localizing functions feels beyond reason. I feel thankful they didn&amp;#x27;t localize C# and command line commands :-)</text></comment>