Do it my way or leave it
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The silly thing is you could probably have hacked away a nasty solution with VBA which uses the other side's web service interface under the covers but which appears to be Excel spreadsheets, and then presented it to the manager as “and you don't even need to send it to them; it all happens automatically when you press this button in this sheet”. It would still have been a little pot of horror, but the blecherosity would have been contained and the project would have worked. Well, at least long enough to allow you to present the real way of doing it as a production upgrade or something.
Assuming that the manager wasn't totally insistent on there not being the slightest variation at all. Alas, I suspect she'd probably doom all such attempts at even having the occasional glance at sanity by insisting on emailing the spreadsheets to the other party anyway…
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@dkf said:
The silly thing is you could probably have hacked away a nasty solution with VBA which uses the other side's web service interface under the covers but which appears to be Excel spreadsheets, and then presented it to the manager as “and you don't even need to send it to them; it all happens automatically when you press this button in this sheet”. It would still have been a little pot of horror, but the blecherosity would have been contained and the project would have worked. Well, at least long enough to allow you to present the real way of doing it as a production upgrade or something.
Yes! That would have been a good way to handle the situation.
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@Ronald said:
Once again stubborn IT people got in the way of business. How hard would it have been to implement the Excel solution; even if it needed some manual tweaking, for a few millions it would have been a no-brainer, even a FTE would have been justified to handle this shit. It was ok to propose a different architecture at first but seeing that the partner really wanted this Excel piece of shit they should have done it that way.
For IT people who want to jerk off writing perfect software in a perfect architecture: open a fucking github account and play with your xml files on evenings and weekends. When you are at work, help the business, don't shove you dogma up the ass of potential business partners.
Yes some people are annoying and it's too bad when it's a client or partner, but that's life. Grow up.
Having had the misfortune of dealing with important business processes that used spreadsheets for everything from persistent storage to data interchange, it's not a no-brainer to implement a proper solution, it's an attempt to avoid an inevitable shit-storm of consequences from such a brain-dead process. Coproate liability, risk of business loss, negative publicity and the like come in to the picture not just the potential "implement any old shit and collect the profits" approach.
You github Blakey rant and your binary choice between perfect software in a perfect architecture vs. a Rube Goldberg spreadsheet scheme doesn't speak well for your ability to reason nor your capabilities in IT
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@Ronald said:
Notice that none of them is in a wheelchair. That's discrimination.
I noticed that all the men are relatively real colours that can be found in humanity (though perhaps not that... saturated), while all the women have odd alien skin colors. So it's misogynist, too. And there are no white puppets. So it's reverse-racist as well.
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@Ronald said:
Coming up with the original story doesn't make you a Prophet. You also should pay attention to what people write
A large part of the discussion ensued because you thought our business partner had suggested the Excel solution, while the original story said the opposite. One big point of yours was "if the partner demands it, you do it, and don't come up with your own fancy solutions", which may or may not be a valid argument but has nothing to do with this story.
@Ronald said:
My guess is that facing the lack of cooperation from IT the account manager got cold feet.
I would agree if a) the web service solution wouldn't have been nearly finished when the project was cancelled, and b) she had actually consulted the IT department before creating a technical concept (which officially is not her job).That way, it was more lack of obedience than lack of cooperation.
My guess is that she was simply so pissed off that somebody dared to disagree with her that she reacted irrationally. She probably knew that she could afford that because in our company, no manager who screwed up, however royally, has ever been fired. I could tell you more examples on that.
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Lesson learned: Never ever disagree with a superior manager. Don't even consider making a suggestion. Just do as you're told, exactly as you're told, even if your job description might say otherwise. That manager didn't get their MBA for being wrong.
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@dkf said:
The silly thing is you could probably have hacked away a nasty solution with VBA which uses the other side's web service interface under the covers but which appears to be Excel spreadsheets
No, the really silly thing is that the manager was actually right. Excel has everything required built-in. If the data already exists in Excel spreadsheets, it's the work of a few minutes to set up a spreadsheet that'll handle it and pass it on to the right place in the right format.
So yes, TRWTF is that the OP is pissing on the suggestion to use Excel despite not having a clue about what Excel is capable of. For example, to access a webservice from Excel, you type a formula in a cell along the lines of =webservice(url) - and that's it. Pushing data is just as trivial.
Whoever didn't realise this was a half-hour project using a tool already on every user's desktop fucked up monumentally. They've not only insisted on reinventing the wheel, but on hand-crafting their wheel whilst sitting on the steps of a wheel-factory - and then criticising the person who told them to just buy a goddamn wheel in the first place.
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There are two valid reasons for not obeying your managers blindly:- You care about the company (just a little) so you don't want to waste its money on useless things.
- The "excel solution" will probably come back to bite you. You'll probably have to work extra hours to fix it or get the blame when it goes wrong.
If the manager is incompetent enough to not delegate the technical details to you, and irrational enough to waste a million dollars because she didn't want "your" solution, you can be sure she's not going to accept the blame herself when it goes wrong. A little bickering now can save hours of blame and accusations later.
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@TDWTF123 said:
Whoever didn't realise this was a half-hour project using a tool already on every user's desktop fucked up monumentally. They've not only insisted on reinventing the wheel, but on hand-crafting their wheel whilst sitting on the steps of a wheel-factory - and then criticising the person who told them to just buy a goddamn wheel in the first place.
Are you seriously saying that, if you have two servers, and you need to transfer data between them, using a simple script that does some HTTP calls is "reinventing the wheel" whereas manually copying the data to an Excel file and using Excel's functions to do HTTP calls is "the easy way"? (and that's not even what the manager was saying, she proposed sending them by email and manually merging them)
Let me put it another way: if the manager had never mentioned excel, and you had to find a way to send a list of product descriptions and pricing data every day to another server (and we have no reason to believe that data is in excel files), would you have immediately thought "Ah, we'll create an excel file with that data and use Excel's functions to transfer it!"? Because that's what you're implying.
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@j6cubic said:
Lesson learned: Never ever disagree with a superior manager.
I'd rather say this was yet another lesson in "never ever read Ronald's posts".
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@anonymous235 said:
manually copying the data to an Excel file and using Excel's functions to do HTTP calls is "the easy way"?
Again, ignorance about Excel is making someone say silly things. You don't 'manually copy' the data, you set up the spreadsheet to automatically import it. If you think about it for a second, you'll realise that's a feature Excel must have, even if you don't know it exists.
And yes, when there's a copy of Excel on every desktop, and the users are familiar with the interface, and it's trivially easy to do the whole thing in Excel in half an hour, and it'll be easily maintainable... Reinventing the wheel seems appropriate.
As described, there's no need for the 'project' that got cancelled. A competent Excel user could have set everything up in half an hour. Let's assume it's more complicated than described: maybe a full day's work.
@anonymous235 said:Let me put it another way: if the manager had never mentioned excel, and you had to find a way to send a list of product descriptions and pricing data every day to another server (and we have no reason to believe that data is in excel files), would you have immediately thought "Ah, we'll create an excel file with that data and use Excel's functions to transfer it!"?
You have a point. I had understood that there was human involvement somewhere in the chain. If there really isn't any, then Excel doesn't come into it. That said, however, it's practically certain that data in an office where Excel exists is at some point being viewed or edited with Excel.
If there is human interaction with the data involved, then doing it the right way in Excel is the way to go.@anonymous235 said:(and that's not even what the manager was saying, she proposed sending them by email and manually merging them)
You very rarely encounter resistance from Excel users when you tell them 'Excel can do that automatically'. I'm sure it would have been much easier to gain agreement for some minor changes like that.
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@Ronald said:
Once again stubborn IT people got in the way of business. How hard would it have been to implement the Excel solution; even if it needed some manual tweaking, for a few millions it would have been a no-brainer, even a FTE would have been justified to handle this shit. It was ok to propose a different architecture at first but seeing that the partner really wanted this Excel piece of shit they should have done it that way.
For IT people who want to jerk off writing perfect software in a perfect architecture: open a fucking github account and play with your xml files on evenings and weekends. When you are at work, help the business, don't shove you dogma up the ass of potential business partners.
Yes some people are annoying and it's too bad when it's a client or partner, but that's life. Grow up.
Aren't you a high paid consultant? I mean you just proofed why people make fun of those guys. because their solutions usually are unmaintainable, half functional crap.
If i had to maintain something as crappy as excel sheets with VBA and not get paid ridiculous hourly fee for the maintenance but just have to do it I would block a stupid excel solution too. You know what happens if someone complains the excel solution is crap? Exactly, the stupid woman that made the suggestion will blame IT. So she is the problem.
Here such a stupid Project Manager recently finally got kicked after like 10 years...OMG
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@Faxmachinen said:
How does the saying go? "A burnt child starts more fires to compensate for its hideously disfigured face?" Something like that.@j6cubic said:
Lesson learned: Never ever disagree with a superior manager.
I'd rather say this was yet another lesson in "never ever read Ronald's posts".
Well, and I do work under a nontechnical superior manager (actually the owner of the company) and I do get plenty of requests that make little sense but are so mission-critical that we can't possibly do it any other way. Which is why I'm currently turning our mostly-completed customer management platform into an email client.
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@dkf said:
The silly thing is you could probably have hacked away a nasty solution with VBA which uses the other side's web service interface under the covers but which appears to be Excel spreadsheets, and then presented it to the manager as “and you don't even need to send it to them; it all happens automatically when you press this button in this sheet”. It would still have been a little pot of horror, but the blecherosity would have been contained and the project would have worked. Well, at least long enough to allow you to present the real way of doing it as a production upgrade or something.
Assuming that the manager wasn't totally insistent on there not being the slightest variation at all. Alas, I suspect she'd probably doom all such attempts at even having the occasional glance at sanity by insisting on emailing the spreadsheets to the other party anyway…
Still unmaintainable. how do you ensure that everyone has the newest version of the spreadsheet? You can't. And I now this out of experience you can tell people 1000 times to use the new one, some just won't because they are mentally handicapped or whatever.
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@beginner_ said:
@dkf said:
The silly thing is you could probably have hacked away a nasty solution with VBA which uses the other side's web service interface under the covers but which appears to be Excel spreadsheets, and then presented it to the manager as “and you don't even need to send it to them; it all happens automatically when you press this button in this sheet”. It would still have been a little pot of horror, but the blecherosity would have been contained and the project would have worked. Well, at least long enough to allow you to present the real way of doing it as a production upgrade or something.
Assuming that the manager wasn't totally insistent on there not being the slightest variation at all. Alas, I suspect she'd probably doom all such attempts at even having the occasional glance at sanity by insisting on emailing the spreadsheets to the other party anyway…
Still unmaintainable. how do you ensure that everyone has the newest version of the spreadsheet? You can't. And I now this out of experience you can tell people 1000 times to use the new one, some just won't because they are mentally handicapped or whatever.
That's why you don't give out the actual excel sheet, you just give out a shortcut that points to it. Bonus points if you host it on a cloud server so that they can access it from anywhere.
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@Buttembly Coder said:
That's why you don't give out the actual excel sheet, you just give out a shortcut that points to it. Bonus points if you host it on a cloud server so that they can access it from anywhere.
I tried that with an executable once. The problem was everyone kept it open all the time and that would lock the file, so if I wanted to replace the exe with a new build I'd have to call everyone and tell them to close the application first. It was just an internal tool with a handful of users, and I don't even know if spreadsheets get locked like that, but if so that's still not maintainable.
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@mott555 said:
@Buttembly Coder said:
That's why you don't give out the actual excel sheet, you just give out a shortcut that points to it. Bonus points if you host it on a cloud server so that they can access it from anywhere.
I tried that with an executable once. The problem was everyone kept it open all the time and that would lock the file, so if I wanted to replace the exe with a new build I'd have to call everyone and tell them to close the application first. It was just an internal tool with a handful of users, and I don't even know if spreadsheets get locked like that, but if so that's still not maintainable.
Then you just need to make sure that the first thing the first excel sheet you release does is check for a newer version, and open that. Problem solved forever.
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@dhromed said:
And there are no white puppets. So it's reverse-racist as well.
Despite what Adria Richards thinks, racism against white people is still just good old-fashioned racism.
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@j6cubic said:
Which is why I'm currently turning our mostly-completed customer management platform into an email client.
Make it a gopher racer and I'll consider applying for a job with your company.
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@Ronald said:
You have no valid point so you go ad hominem. Yet you call *me* a troll.
Ahem.
@Ronald said:
@garrywong said:
@Ronald said:
So I could just as well tell my mechanic exactly how I want him to fix my car, knowing nothing about cars other than how to drive them, and when he rightly refuses to follow my insane directions I can claim that he's trying to shove his dogma up my pass, interfering with the business of the repair shop?Once again stubborn IT people got in the way of business. How hard would it have been to implement the Excel solution; even if it needed some manual tweaking, for a few millions it would have been a no-brainer, even a FTE would have been justified to handle this shit. It was ok to propose a different architecture at first but seeing that the partner really wanted this Excel piece of shit they should have done it that way.
For IT people who want to jerk off writing perfect software in a perfect architecture: open a fucking github account and play with your xml files on evenings and weekends. When you are at work, help the business, don't shove you dogma up the ass of potential business partners.
Yes some people are annoying and it's too bad when it's a client or partner, but that's life. Grow up.
All you can come up with is this retarded example? Tell whatever the fuck you want to your mechanic, you are a moron anyways.
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yeah, ronald went straight to the homophobic-sex-attacks. avoiding further interactions.
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@Buttembly Coder said:
Then you just need to make sure that the first thing the first excel sheet you release does is check for a newer version, and open that. Problem solved forever.
Or you just create a real application that has none of these problems. You just proofed my point. "Excel apps" are a steaming pile of shit and you need workaround on top of workarounds to make it half-usable while still not being maintainable. You know I inherited a crap pile of excel and MS Access stuff. Funny thing is the guy that was responsible for it obviously did not know that MS Access has forms so all his cool database applications used Excel User Forms as "front end". It was retarded like shit.
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@beginner_ said:
@Buttembly Coder said:
Then you just need to make sure that the first thing the first excel sheet you release does is check for a newer version, and open that. Problem solved forever.
Or you just create a real application that has none of these problems. You just proofed my point. "Excel apps" are a steaming pile of shit and you need workaround on top of workarounds to make it half-usable while still not being maintainable. You know I inherited a crap pile of excel and MS Access stuff. Funny thing is the guy that was responsible for it obviously did not know that MS Access has forms so all his cool database applications used Excel User Forms as "front end". It was retarded like shit.
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Why are there like 40 replies here to Ronald's obvious troll? Son I am disappoint.
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@Buttembly Coder said:
Filed under: Broken sarcasm detector detected
Well, that would require some sort of a broken sarcasm detector detector which is a concept so ridiculous it makes me want to laugh out loud and chortle. But not at you, O holiest of gods, with the wrathfulness and the vengeance and the blood rain and the "Hey-hey-hey, it hurts me."
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@blakeyrat said:
Why are there like 40 replies here to Ronald's obvious troll? Son I am disappoint.
The effectiveness of the troll has nothing to do with the quality of the trolling, it's only proportional to the energy and willingness to share of those trolled.
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@ronin said:
in our company, no manager who screwed up, however royally, has ever been fired. I could tell you more examples on that.
Please do. snoofle's currently dried up.
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@Faxmachinen said:
@j6cubic said:
Lesson learned: Never ever disagree with a superior manager.
I'd rather say this was yet another lesson in "never ever read Ronald's posts".
This is funny when some random dude comes out of the woodwork and makes this kind of statement, as if it had any value whatsoever or was adding anything to the discussion. Like some random radio caller telling Rush Limbaugh that he agrees with him.
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@Ronald said:
This is funny when some random dude comes out of the woodwork and makes this kind of statement, as if it had any value whatsoever or was adding anything to the discussion. Like some random radio caller telling Rush Limbaugh that he agrees with him.
I agree with whatever Ronald just said.
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@Buttembly Coder said:
@mott555 said:
@Buttembly Coder said:
That's why you don't give out the actual excel sheet, you just give out a shortcut that points to it. Bonus points if you host it on a cloud server so that they can access it from anywhere.
I tried that with an executable once. The problem was everyone kept it open all the time and that would lock the file, so if I wanted to replace the exe with a new build I'd have to call everyone and tell them to close the application first. It was just an internal tool with a handful of users, and I don't even know if spreadsheets get locked like that, but if so that's still not maintainable.
Then you just need to make sure that the first thing the first excel sheet you release does is check for a newer version, and open that. Problem solved forever.This is why God created ClickOnce.
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@beginner_ said:
how do you ensure that everyone has the newest version of the spreadsheet?
You don't. You present this to the Excel-loving manager as an issue that needs to be addressed, and let her continue to design the spec.
As she seems to have nominated herself as technical architect, you simply present her with all of these issues seeking clarification until she either flounders and admits that (a) Excel may not be the best method and/or (b) perhaps she's out of her depth and needs to hand this responsibility to someone more capable ... that, or she ploughs ahead with an unmaintainable solution that backfires badly when she'd held accountable.
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@_leonardo_ said:
yeah, ronald went straight to the homophobic-sex-attacks. avoiding further interactions.
homophobic-sex-attacks? Are you talking about the paperboys thing? If so then you not only have a severe lack of common sense but also no aptitude whatsoever for humor. You sir must be a terrible bore during office parties, which is why I guess people from the social committee in your company have to run a lottery to pick the unlucky coworkers that will be seated at the same table as you.
I guess we will never know for sure since you just pledged to avoid further interactions...
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@mott555 said:
I tried that with an executable once. The problem was everyone kept it open all the time and that would lock the file, so if I wanted to replace the exe with a new build I'd have to call everyone and tell them to close the application first. It was just an internal tool with a handful of users, and I don't even know if spreadsheets get locked like that, but if so that's still not maintainable.
My experience says that's actually considered acceptable unless it's something that has to update often. Even if it does, it's perfectly feasible to make the portions that have to be updated link to a separate spreadsheet on an update-on-open basis, so you can replace the linked sheet without any trouble. Users will have the old data until they refresh, of course.
@beginner_ said:You know I inherited a crap pile of excel
and MS Access stuff. Funny thing is the guy that was responsible for it
obviously did not know that MS Access has forms so all his cool database
applications used Excel User Forms as "front end". It was retarded
like shit.
Or, maybe he knew that, but he also knew that Excel is on every desktop, whereas most users won't have an Access license. If you were a little less ignorantly prejudiced against Excel, and actually learnt what it can do, you'd be a lot less critical.
And yes, I know I'm sounding like a Notes advocate. The difference is that I'm not saying Excel is great for everything, just that there's a certain subset of problems for which it is the correct solution. I've seen plenty of horrendous abuses of Excel's capabilities, but when things are done well it's possible to produce something that's not only cheap, quick and maintainable, but also has some elegance to it. It's somewhat ironic that those things are basically the holy grail of programming, but they're occasionally achieved by the programmers' antichrist.
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@TDWTF123 said:
he also knew that Excel is on every desktop, whereas most users won't have an Access license
It certainly isn't something you can take for granted. That is, don't expect to release software to the general public that depends on Excel and have it roll out smoothly.
Edit: that's why the web is the preferred platform for these kinds of things. You can access the data from pretty much anywhere, even your phone, and you don't have to install anything [I don't think there's a consumer OS still supported that ships without a web browser].
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Holy crap, I can't even tell who is trolling in this thread and who isn't anymore.
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@beginner_ said:
Still unmaintainable. how do you ensure that everyone has the newest version of the spreadsheet? You can't.
Just make the spreadsheet silently auto-update itself from a central source, and only ever treat the data in the sheet as a cache (the “real” copy can live somewhere sane).I know people who deliver real apps like this (though not using Excel, because they're smart).
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@billhead said:
Holy crap, I can't even tell who is trolling in this thread and who isn't anymore.
That's because you don't know what trolling is. It's a misconception that within a given forum, members posting opinions that are not in line with a vision shared by a larger number of other members are trolls; it just means that there is a general bias (which differs from common sense because of the selection criteria for the population). People use the word "troll" as a way to attack the credibility of those who disagree with them and to avoid the difficult task of coming up with valid points to support their preconceived ideas. If you are not sure what this means just imagine a discussion with a member of the Flat Earth Society or with a strong proponent of Creationism; it is a lot easier to call them morons or trolls than come up with arguments for a position that to you is obviously the right one (which is debatable at least for the Creationism part).
Here is another example. Remember when Apple came up with the new adapter for the iPhone one year ago? On Slashdot there was of course a story about that, and anyone who posted comments to the effect that this was just a money-grabbing scheme from Apple and that they should use micro-USB like everyone else were immediately modded down "-1 Troll", because at that time there was still a large number of fanbois on Slashdot.
On TDWTF most members are developers and have experienced some degree of pain caused by lousy managers, so there is a general bias against managers. Which means that if someone comes up with a story about a WTF where a manager is involved, anyone challenging the OP is quickly labeled as a troll. Which is too bad because I guarantee you that the day only people who agree with each other remain active on the forum it will be boring as a debate between ESCON and FICON zealots during lunch break at an IBM Z conference.
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@dkf said:
@beginner_ said:
Still unmaintainable. how do you ensure that everyone has the newest version of the spreadsheet? You can't.
Just make the spreadsheet silently auto-update itself from a central source, and only ever treat the data in the sheet as a cache (the “real” copy can live somewhere sane).I know people who deliver real apps like this (though not using Excel, because they're smart).
Recent versions of Excel have pretty good data connectors and you can configure the spreadsheet to pull data from a different location (web service or database) and to refresh every time they are opened (or from other triggers such as StreamInsight, PowerPivot, etc). This makes Excel a de facto grid control with better editing tools than a Telerik grid.
I'm not saying that an Excel-based solution is superior (or not) to a regular ETL or to a REST-driven workflow; however people here don't seem to know that Excel has evolved a lot over the years and that is is possible to do pretty amazing thing when you use it properly. PowerPivot has been a major milestone allowing regular users to do a lot of data processing on their own without requiring programmers or DBAs. This is very different from supporting CSV data and a shitload of brain-damaged macros. Excel has evolved from a simple data format to a rich data processing client; I've seen a lot of situations where Excel files don't store data at all, they are just used as a repository of connections and OLAP queries.
People can take what they want from this post and I guess that the context is not helping, but I strongly advise to keep an open mind. There is nothing inherently wrong with an Excel solution, one has to see the specific implementation before making up his mind about maintenance or reliability.
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@Ronald said:
That's because you don't know what trolling is. It's a misconception that within a given forum, members posting opinions that are not in line with a vision shared by a larger number of other members are trolls; it just means that there is a general bias (which differs from common sense because of the selection criteria for the population).
That's true, the word "troll" is severely overused.
But someone who intentionally makes inflammatory posts with the intention of getting angry replies is trolling, and yes this definitely happens regularly in these forums.
And in defense of everyone who said you were trolling, your posts in this thread are so stupid that it's natural for people to assume you don't actually believe that.
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@Faxmachinen said:
@j6cubic said:
Lesson learned: Never ever disagree with a superior manager.
I'd rather say this was yet another lesson in "never ever read Ronald's posts".
Starting to hate that guy. Well done, if trolling. The whole top gun assitude. Mods, please change his handle to Maverick?
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@notchulance said:
@Faxmachinen said:
@j6cubic said:
Lesson learned: Never ever disagree with a superior manager.
I'd rather say this was yet another lesson in "never ever read Ronald's posts".
Starting to hate that guy. Well done, if trolling. The whole top gun assitude. Mods, please change his handle to Maverick?You don't need a lot to start hating people. Over the years I've noticed that this is a common flaw of ugly people; just for the sake of discussion, how would you rate your looks out of 10?
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@anonymous235 said:
And in defense of everyone who said you were trolling, your posts in this thread are so stupid that it's natural for people to assume you don't actually believe that.
No. Based on the information provided, I believe that the real moron in this story is the colleague, not the account manager, and that as a whole the company today would be stronger if IT had kept their mouth shut after the first confrontation and implemented the Excel solution. If you have compelling arguments that would indicate that the business is instead in better standing following this incident, please provide them. They will make for a more interesting discussion than rehashing weak insults.
And I still think that the OP only provided the details that shine a positive light on IT and skipped the nasty stuff. The whole "she cancelled the project only because we did not want to use her Excel files" is fishy. This sounds exactly like a stupid incompetent cunt going to a job interview and not getting it because she is a stupid incompetent cunt but the story she tells to the girls at the beauty parlor is that the hiring manager was sexist. Nobody calls off a multi-millions dollars project because there has been a dispute over Excel files. There is a lot more going on but it's easier to blame the manager and have a good laugh with the boys. Childish.
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@TDWTF123 said:
Or, maybe he knew that, but he also knew that Excel is on every desktop, whereas most users won't have an Access license. If you were a little less ignorantly prejudiced against Excel, and actually learnt what it can do, you'd be a lot less critical.
There also is the MS Access Runtime which does not require a license and is exactly meant for this purpose.
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@Ronald said:
Here is another example. Remember when Apple came up with the new adapter for the iPhone one year ago? On Slashdot there was of course a story about that, and anyone who posted comments to the effect that this was just a money-grabbing scheme from Apple and that they should use micro-USB like everyone else were immediately modded down "-1 Troll", because at that time there was still a large number of fanbois on Slashdot.
Well, micro-USB is the shittiest, most fragile connector I've ever seen on a mobile phone. Of course if the posts had asked for mini-USB I'd agree that the mods were unjust.
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@TDWTF123 said:
So yes, TRWTF is that the OP is pissing on the suggestion to use Excel despite not having a clue about what Excel is capable of.
We're not talking about giving some PHB a tool where (s)he can view data from a webservice his/her beloved Excel.
We're talking about hundreds of product descriptions from two different CMS, and ten thousands of pricing data records coming from a mainframe that need to be delivered on a daily basis. I don't see how Excel is supposed to serve as a clean solution here.
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@Ragnax said:
In other words; the root of the problem is the usual incompetence on the business side, not the IT side. (However; woe on the poor developer that points out that elephant in the room…)
I've made a career out of shooting that particular elephant. You just have to do it with sufficient gusto, complete conviction and have an ally in middle and upper management run interference. And it's very important you have your facts straight, because being wrong is fatal.The average developer would get his/her teeth kicked in because the whole process is too confrontational and the personality types just don't work.
And for what it's worth, my company is stupidly fond of using Excel as a data exchange medium internally (especially for things that are absolutely 100% critical and essential to have done right the first time. Protip: It never is). And some of our customers want to build entire APIs around it. It's rare - around 10% of our application portfolio (which numbers in the hundreds). Something on the order of 75% of our application support team's time goes into pissing around trying to figure out how some illiterate moron screwed up a particular spreadsheet, though. Not an indictment of Excel as a tool, really, but it's not the right tool for any of these jobs.
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@joe.edwards said:
@TDWTF123 said:
No business PC has shipped without Excel in a decade or so, either. And you can place more reliance on your version-audit of Excel than on web-browser compatibility. But yes, obviously, if you release software onto random platforms without any form of checking, you'll have trouble. That's hardly an Excel-specific criticism.he also knew that Excel is on every desktop, whereas most users won't have an Access license
It certainly isn't something you can take for granted. That is, don't expect to release software to the general public that depends on Excel and have it roll out smoothly.
Edit: that's why the web is the preferred platform for these kinds of things. You can access the data from pretty much anywhere, even your phone, and you don't have to install anything [I don't think there's a consumer OS still supported that ships without a web browser].@ronin said:
And there's another example. You have a prejudice that Excel is for doing the former, when in fact it's well-capable of handling the latter. If there is some degree of human interaction with the data, Excel is likely a perfectly reasonable way to go, and possibly the best way to go.@TDWTF123 said:
So yes, TRWTF is that the OP is pissing on the suggestion to use Excel despite not having a clue about what Excel is capable of.
We're not talking about giving some PHB a tool where (s)he can view data from a webservice his/her beloved Excel.
We're talking about hundreds of product descriptions from two different CMS, and ten thousands of pricing data records coming from a mainframe that need to be delivered on a daily basis. I don't see how Excel is supposed to serve as a clean solution here.
@Ronald said:
people here don't seem to know that Excel has evolved a lot over the years and that is is possible to do pretty amazing thing when you use it properly.
I don't know how much Ronald really means everything he says on here, but this bit is spot on.
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@TDWTF123 said:
@ronin said:
And there's another example. You have a prejudice that Excel is for doing the former, when in fact it's well-capable of handling the latter. If there is some degree of human interaction with the data, Excel is likely a perfectly reasonable way to go, and possibly the best way to go.We're not talking about giving some PHB a tool where (s)he can view data from a webservice his/her beloved Excel.
We're talking about hundreds of product descriptions from two different CMS, and ten thousands of pricing data records coming from a mainframe that need to be delivered on a daily basis. I don't see how Excel is supposed to serve as a clean solution here.
Except that the spec he was handed said it was the former. The only reason there was any human interaction in this instance was because of the clueless PHB.
Sadly, since the Excel inanity didn't get implemented, we'll never get the story about the chaos that reigned when the PHB who would have been responsible for emailing the spreadsheets went on vacation.
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@boomzilla said:
@TDWTF123 said:
And there's another example. You have a prejudice that Excel is for doing the former, when in fact it's well-capable of handling the latter. If there is some degree of human interaction with the data, Excel is likely a perfectly reasonable way to go, and possibly the best way to go.
Except that the spec he was handed said it was the former. The only reason there was any human interaction in this instance was because of the clueless PHB.@ronin said:
For this purpose, we had to provide our new business partner with daily updated product descriptions and pricing data.
What programme do you reckon is being used to update the product descriptions and pricing data daily? Since it's clearly somewhere Excel exists, the probability it's Excel approaches unity.
@boomzilla said:
Sadly, since the Excel inanity didn't get implemented, we'll never get the story about the chaos that reigned when the PHB who would have been responsible for emailing the spreadsheets went on vacation.
Still with that nonsense? I thought we'd dealt with it already. That can all be easily automated.
