The Excel Syndrome
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@blakeyrat said:
It's been 3 weeks!! Time to check back with KrakenLover and see how far he's gotten!
I still haven't started the project.Management put it on hold, and put me on another project. Now my top priority is getting the new ERP system working, and everything else is either on hold, cancelled, or waiting for a meeting to reevaluate need (and, actually, the meeting to discuss the need for a project tracking system is scheduled for today).
So, you wouldn't be unjustified in saying "I told you so".
Though, I wouldn't have been able to get some kind of third-party system up and running in this amount of time either. No matter what I do, or try to do, there are always meetings that get in the way of actual work.
Check back again in three more weeks.....
*sigh*
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@KrakenLover said:
I still haven't started the project.
Management put it on hold, and put me on another project. Now my top priority is getting the new ERP system working, and everything else is either on hold, cancelled, or waiting for a meeting to reevaluate need (and, actually, the meeting to discuss the need for a project tracking system is scheduled for today).
So, you wouldn't be unjustified in saying "I told you so".
I win again.
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@KrakenLover said:
Check back again in three more weeks.....
No no.
Three months at least. Guaranteed.
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@dhromed said:
@KrakenLover said:
Check back again in three more weeks.....
No no.
Three months at least. Guaranteed.
Well, I set a new reminder.
Clock's ticking! Not really it's all digital! I guess that means it's still ticking but at billions of hertz! But whatever!
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Excel is a great product, but like anything else, it can be overused. It is NOT the solution to every problem. I like Excel; I happen to keep a small phone list (about 40 phone numbers) in a spreadsheet, which is printed and sits next to my phone, and gets updated about once every 6 months or so. It holds the phone numbers that I call frequently along with other info that doesn't fit into Outlook's contact list very well.
I have also dealt with large Excel spreadsheets (workbooks) with 100 to 150 worksheets per file, and custom macros. And spreadsheets where the 65,000 row limit is a problem. (That one was replaced with SQL and C#.)
As a thought experiment, think about all of the code that goes into implementing Excel, the product... and how long it would take to re-create this from scratch. (Here's a test: Implement Excel in C#.) I am impressed with the product. There are a few competitors, but as far as I know, none of the competitors can handle all of the features of the VBA object model or its replacement, VSTO or whatever it's called.
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@DWalker59 said:
(Here's a test: Implement Excel in C#.)
One of my dreams if I ever win the lotto, or someone showers me with money for no reason, is to make a well-designed, script-able Excel-compatible spreadsheet program with optional strong typing. Excel is useful now, but imagine how much more useful it would be if all the niggling unfixable (due to backwards-compatibility with thousands of existing spreadsheets) bugs were fixed, and if you could create strongly-typed columns, and if you could create form-based front-ends (like in Google Apps.)
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@blakeyrat said:
make a well-designed, script-able Excel-compatible spreadsheet
@blakeyrat said:imagine how much more useful it would be if all the niggling unfixable (due to backwards-compatibility with thousands of existing spreadsheets) bugs were fixed
By "Excel-compatible" I assume you mean "handle any spreadsheet created by Excel". But wouldn't your new designed-from-scratch spreadsheet program have to recreate all of those "unfixable bugs" in order to be "Excel-compatible"?
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I think he means "exports to CSV".
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@El_Heffe said:
@blakeyrat said:
make a well-designed, script-able Excel-compatible spreadsheet
@blakeyrat said:imagine how much more useful it would be if all
By "Excel-compatible" I assume you mean "handle any spreadsheet created by Excel". But wouldn't your new designed-from-scratch spreadsheet program have to recreate all of those "unfixable bugs" in order to be "Excel-compatible"?
the niggling unfixable (due to backwards-compatibility with thousands of
existing spreadsheets) bugs were fixedYes. And no, I haven't yet worked out how that would work, exactly. I don't have the millions of dollars yet.
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@DWalker59 said:
As a thought experiment, think about all of the code that goes into implementing Excel, the product... and how long it would take to re-create this from scratch. (Here's a test: Implement Excel in C#.)
Do we have to include the flight simulator easter egg?
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@blakeyrat said:
Yes. And no, I haven't yet worked out how that would work, exactly. I don't have the millions of dollars yet.
Can that be done/simulated with sufficient VBA hooks? I don't know enough about when you can trigger an action vs when Excel accepts input, but would could good macros clean and accept/reject cell inputs?
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@blakeyrat said:
Clock's ticking! Not really it's all digital! I guess that means it's still ticking but at billions of hertz! But whatever!
It's been another 3 weeks! Check back time!
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@blakeyrat said:
@blakeyrat said:
Still haven't started.Clock's ticking! Not really it's all digital! I guess that means it's still ticking but at billions of hertz! But whatever!
It's been another 3 weeks! Check back time!
Uppper management says that the spreadsheets are good enough for the time being.
New target date is sometime in September.
cough
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@KrakenLover said:
Still haven't started.
Uppper management says that the spreadsheets are good enough for the time being.
New target date is sometime in September.
cough
Ok, well I'm not going to set another calendar reminder, so I guess you're off the hook.
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@blakeyrat said:
Ok, well I'm not going to set another calendar reminder, so I guess you're off the hook.
Yeah.I know I'm pathetic.
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@dhromed said:
Three months at least. Guaranteed.
@KrakenLover said:
Uppper management says that the spreadsheets are good enough for the time being.
New target date is sometime in September.
Looks like I win.
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@dhromed said:
@dhromed said:
Three months at least. Guaranteed.
@KrakenLover said:
Uppper management says that the spreadsheets are good enough for the time being.
New target date is sometime in September.
Looks like I win.
Yeah, but only after I had already won round one.
Either way, we're both better at predicting the management at KrakenLover's job than he is. HIGH FIVE!
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Indeed, experience with these things allows us to make superior predictions such as "It'll take way longer than that."
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So no high five then. That's... that's ok I guess. :(
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The moment is gone.
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@blakeyrat said:
@KrakenLover said:
Still haven't started.
Uppper management says that the spreadsheets are good enough for the time being.
New target date is sometime in September.
*cough*
Ok, well I'm not going to set another calendar reminder, so I guess you're off the hook.
I did. It's the end of September, how did it go?
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@Zemm said:
I did. It's the end of September, how did it go?
I'm just about done. I started last week and have spent about three days on it so far.It's actually looking pretty good. At least compared to what our current set up looks like.
The users are really looking forward to it.
Better late than never, I guess.
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So, it looks like it will take around 3 weeks?
Looks like the high-five was premature.
:)
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I once worked for a manager who suffered from the Excel syndrome. Despite knowing what a database was (the company was one he created and MD of, and was in the field of IT support, so one would hope that was the case at least as most of the clients had SBS systems that used MS SQL Server) he insisted on the mailing "database" to be managed in spreadsheets. This was back when Microsoft though we'd only ever need a maximum of 65535 rows in a spreadsheet, and the mailing list was often much larger than that. So what was the solution? Well, when you hit the limit, just create a new spreadhseet of course (note that he didn't actually want to use separate sheets within the one file, each spreadsheet was its own file on the server)
Oh and of course the list had to be alphabetically organised (by some column I forget now) so that when a new entry had to be entered into a spreadsheet that was already full, entry 65536 and above had to be popped into the next file in the series, repeated as necessary if that was full too, etc.
I did suggest using a proper database for this but he was of the mind that it wouldn't be simple enough for the non-technical secretarial staff to handle. That manager was probably one of the sources of the most IT WTFery I've seen in years, made more funny by the fact that he was supposedly technically adept and the company was responsible for the IT support of a lot of businesses in the area.
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@The Dark Lord said:
The only reason management finally let me proceed on this project was because they wanted about six new fields added to the printed reports. I explained to them that it would take me a month or two to reverse engineer the 20 year old Access database, and add the columns, with no guarantee that the modifications wouldn't totally break the database.So, it looks like it will take around 3 weeks?
Looks like the high-five was premature.
:)
If they hadn't wanted those new fields, we'd be stuck with that god-awful Access database for another 20 years.
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Recently I've been dealing with exactly the opposite problem: Excel phobia. At the moment I'm a subcontractor for a (very) large and well-known PC-builder supplying PCs to an equally large and well-known investment bank. For some reason, the entire project involves extensive usage of Excel instead of some sensible database-based system, and yet there is Excel-phobia to the extent that hidden columns in a spreadsheet cause ripples of panic to spread up and down multiple layers of
panicmanagement. (I sleep-typed 'panic' for management, but that's a Freudian-slip if ever there was one.) You simply wouldn't believe the amount of running-around-in-circles conditional formatting can cause, despite this being a site called 'the daily WTF' and me telling you that even by normal standards this is barely credible.Witchcraft? The modern day equivalent is a macro, apparently. Autofilters? Nay, heathen, we'm don't like that kind of trickery round these parts.
This project is actually a fractal mess of WTF: the whole thing is a giant WTF, and any individual piece you zoom in on is equally full of WTF. I keep meaning to write it up as a thread of its own, but it's too overwhelming.
To give one example, there's a big spreadsheet that's essentially the keystone to the whole job. It's so big that there's no question but that it should be done in a database somehow. Zoom in, and despite that, it's still well within the most basic Excel-syndrome territory, and could be handled reasonably well with some moderately advanced Excel skills - autofiltering, some if functions, cross-referencing so-on, let alone anything using VBA - but we're not allowed to use autofilter (or rather, to save the sheet with it on and send to upper-management). However, zoom in another level, and it turns out that the data is largely inaccurate - and, what's more, is subject to changes (of which we won't be notified) at a rate that almost guarantees that even going by the most optimistic predicted timescales it'll be significantly out of date by the time we come to use it. Zoom in a bit further, and it turns out that the data is in any case not useful for the job at hand, even if it was accurate.
It occurs to me that if I could describe that well, it's almost front-page material on its own, and yet it's only one minor node of the whole thing. The only thing more frustrating than the immense wtf-ery I work with is not being able to do it justice here.
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@KrakenLover said:
@Zemm said:
I did. It's the end of September, how did it go?
I'm just about done. I started last week and have spent about three days on it so far.It's actually looking pretty good. At least compared to what our current set up looks like.
The users are really looking forward to it.
Better late than never, I guess.
Yeah, LibreOffice can be a little bit tricky to set up. At least you've got it working now, though.
