Spreadsheet Usage Debate

Why is better than just a simple spreadsheet as input? Spreadsheets are still somehow very underrated

Spreadsheets are a hammer so if that's all you know then all problems look like the nail. Really, many power users of Excel ought to be looking at more capable, testable and readable solutions from professional data analysts and scientists. Python would be a good start, but there are many options better than Excel for critical systems.

Excel would be fine if people didn't keep creating spreadsheets with it.

Excel is an excellent hammer. A spreadsheet is a system to develop pure functional graphs and to interact with them in real time. I spent lots of time on finance spreadsheets myself and also thought it was Stockholm syndrome, but when I transitioned to working on software I came to see exactly why spreadsheets are entrenched the way they are, enjoy seeing them used creatively, and would never wish bespoke software on finance people. And good for them, they seem to know better, themselves!

I've come to the conclusion that anyone trying to use a spreadsheet in a way that requires excel, probably shouldn't.

for when not to use a spreadsheet, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34968457 tl;dr when it involves automated processes

My uncle worked at a very large corporation that couldn't update to a later version of Excel because they relied on some spreadsheet to do their taxes, and some minor difference between versions broke the spreadsheet. No one could reverse engineer what the spreadsheet did. With a complex enough sheet, every cell becomes a separate function with no documentation.That's unfortunately a pattern you see with these efforts to make things simpler and more visual. They're great tools,

Excel sheets aren't very maintainable. You get a big grid, plus named ranges. There aren't good tools for generalisation or abstraction, so big sheets have all the usual problems of bad software: hard to understand, hard to change, full of inconsistencies, etc. There are also no good options for source control, modular reuse, etc.I work on a desk which has a lot of vital calculations in Excel spreadsheets. They work, and we make money, but it takes a lot of human effort (expensive t

Excel spreadsheets built 30 years ago likely pin people to excel

Why not spreadsheets? The end-user would not be bothered with this stuff.