Hey Reg readers, Happy Spreadsheet day! Because there ain't no party like an Excel party
- Reference: 1602873127
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/16/happy_spreadsheet_day/
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Celebrating the arrival of VisiCalc for the Apple II all those years ago, Spreadsheet day commemorates the columns and rows beloved by number crunchers everywhere, whatever their tool of choice (be it the likes of Lotus 1-2-3, Google Sheets or the tediously ubiquitous Excel.)
Spreadsheet day itself has its origins in 2010, by which time the tool was already firmly entrenched in the public psyche, with Excel almost a byword for the things. From their humble accountancy beginnings, the grids have been expanded into reporting and analysis engines and beyond.
While Microsoft infamously dropped the "Hall of Tortured Souls" Easter Egg into Excel 95, others have actually had a crack at [2]implementing a 3D game engine in the thing (caution: needs macros) or undertaken [3]musical shenanigans . It's all quite beyond anything the spreadsheet's creators could have dreamed all those decades ago.
The impressive extensibility via macros (and the dread Visual BASIC for Applications) has nearly been Excel's undoing over time.
Excel Hell: It's not just blame for pandemic pandemonium being spread between the sheets [4]READ MORE
Miscreants have engineered the convenient code snippets for nefarious purposes while over-enthusiastic enterprises and managers used the things as a way of gluing systems together or dodging the requirement for a purpose-built GUI and database.
Indeed, the timing of Spreadsheet day is unfortunate, coming as it does mere weeks after an out of date Excel format left thousands of COVID-19 cases unreported due to " [5]computer issues ". Microsoft's spreadsheet was an easy scapegoat but, as in so many spreadsheet related cock-ups, it is usually the tool on the stool rather than the tool on the screen that is to blame.
That said, Excel has [6]more than enough funnies of its own without humans needing to get involved. Indeed, it's obsession with "helpful" autocorrection has caused [7]headaches for geneticists seeing the "DEC1" gene quietly changed to "1-Dec" while its [8]sometimes confusing precision can catch out the unwary.
Certainly, spreadsheets (for Excel is not the only offender) have their place, and it is up to the IT professional to slot them into the most appropriate location. Before being ignored by an over-enthusiastic customer who has read one Excel blog too many.
Happy Spreadsheet Day! ®
Get our [9]Tech Resources
[1] https://spreadsheet-day.com/
[2] https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/CBel/20180208/308549/3D_engine_entirely_made_of_MS_Excel_formulae__Enjoy_this_Doomxls_file_.php
[3] https://youtu.be/RFdCM2kHL64
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/06/excel/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/excel_england_coronavirus_contact_error/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/06/excel/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/06/excel_gene_names/
[8] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2008/04/10/understanding-floating-point-precision-aka-why-does-excel-give-me-seemingly-wrong-answers/
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Spreadsheets - The first TRULY useful microcomputer app! Long may they reign!
Spreadsheets - The first TRULY useful microcomputer app! Long may they reign! ...and having occasionally written my own programs to implement a spreadsheet, just for fun and experience, may I say, spreadsheets are a BRILLIANT idea! I've been playing with them since MultiPlan on the IBM PC and the TI-99/4A. 'Nuff said. I'll get me coat. Mine's the one with the Lotus 1-2-3 manual in the pocket.
[1]Advert from Matt Parker about spreadsheets in light of the recent issue;
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBoKwArgC3A
All You Need Are Various Sizes Of Hammer
When I were nought but a wee half-wit, I used a Lotus spreadsheet to calculate and total refrigeration loads and then size multiplexed refrigeration units using the tax table feature. It was a real time saver.
Then I went back to school to find out what the hell I was doing and embarked on a new career.
lotus
Back in the late eighties my friend and I got our hands on Lotus 123. The very first thing he did with it was make a database of his music collection. I recall shaking my head and saying "That's not what you're supposed to do with it".
Grammar, please!
"...none of them IS a database."
Remember only 6 people in your Excel party
or you may spend the night in a cell.
Something I was told in the 80s
I was exposed to SuperCalc (can't remember if it was 2 or 3) in the mid 80s. Thought the world had turned golden, especially when I discovered that it had an elementary macro system available (type commands as plain text row by row in column 1, save as a sheet and then execute that 'sheet' within another).
I enthused about this new power to a geeky (older, more experienced and wiser) friend who told me "it isn't a programming language and it isn't a database".
Wise words then, wise words now. I still remember those words when somebody suggests using the New Shiny as our new panacea.
Don't get me wrong, spreadies are a great tool for lots of tasks from easy-to-do forms to simple run-a-formula apps for mathematically challenged users. But the macros aren't programming languages(*) and the programs aren't databases.
(*) Yes, there are exceptions. But the generalisation stands.