1. Spreadsheets ; Can we do better?

Spreadsheets, they invariably have column names A, B, C, that cannot be renamed and the first row people put the column names they really want but they cannot have because the column names are fixed as A, B, C. Not a big deal but still annoying. Another thing about spreadsheets is the way it interprets input: Put in "June 5th" and it will parse it as a string, you have to use the numeric only dates for input instead of what you feel like putting in. Suppose you want to put in a numeric expression like '10-4', well this will be interpreted as a date. When you really wanted 10 minus 4. Suppose you want to type in a range 9-10, well that will be interpreted as a date.

Spreadsheets are used as crude databases. We have database programs in Office suites but they are often overlooked because they are complicated to use. So, I hope I inspired you to write a killer application. By the way, I wont support you financially while you write this application. and I wont pay you a dime for your application after you have produced it. But I will give you lip service that you ought to do it.

Signed:

Open Euphoria User

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2. Re: Spreadsheets ; Can we do better?

In spreadsheets, you can have many tables with their own headers (column titles). If you name the columns, you can have only one.

Some people will enter month-day as a date, some other may want to enter is as an operation. Who is right? To get 10-4 as an integer, enter =10-4. '10-4 gives a string.

Maybe you don't want a new spreadsheet, but something close to it: a specific application based on EuGrid with dynamic parameters.

Regards

Jean-Marc

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3. Re: Spreadsheets ; Can we do better?

I know some people who can make a spreadsheet do anything you can imagine. Up to, and possibly including, a flight simulator.

That's not me. I won't even use one for what it was designed for, balancing my bank account. Too many secret incantations, too easy to break.

To me, a spreadsheet is like a house of cards - sure, it looks impressive, but one sneeze and ...

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4. Re: Spreadsheets ; Can we do better?

I have always thought spreadsheets were useful for quick calculations of a series of data, but businesses tend to use them for too many things rather than have a programmer design a custom solution. They end up doing too much to make the spreadsheet do stuff it isn't efficient at, such as manually creating new rows to handle another month's worth of data and manually expanding data ranges of formulas and copying formatting and stuff. Of course, with all that messing around, someone is going to screw it up and break some formulas or formatting, and then someone has to fix it, over and over again. (That was usually me doing all that work...and no matter how much i begged and pleaded with people to just enter the numbers and not touch anything else, someone always managed to totally screw things up.) I have always wished for something that makes it really really easy to build a nice quality database GUI that is id10t-proof.

You would think Access would do just that. But, i found it was quite lacking. One time, years ago, i replaced an Excel spreadsheet that was used for several years' worth of equipment outage and maintenance logs with an Access database, which was slightly better. But i hated how users were forced to have an annoying set of toolbars and a multi-child-window interface that can only flip between records. Also, there was no easy way to make it synchronize in real-time between multiple users. So, i used Visual Basic for Applications to hack together a GUI that ran on top of Access, which evolved into a pretty useful application that included a workplace schedule, contact list, and other views. I could set different permissions for different users. It even had a read-only viewer that the higher-ups could run to view current job/outage status. I used a trick to send messages to all clients, so they could refresh whenever data changed. People could even send instant messages to other people. It was quite sophisticated for an Access/VBA program. It tended to crash and lock the entire database, so i even had to figure out a trick to send a message to all other remote clients to close so the database could be unlocked and repaired/compacted. Eventually, I ported all the code over to Visual Basic 6.0 so i could compile EXE files to distribute to all of the users, but it still connected to an MS Access database file on a file server. That was much more efficient and reliable. But, the whole time i was working on it, i hated how complex VB syntax was compared to Euphoria.

It's amazing how many businesses and organizations mess with a spreadsheet instead of developing a custom database that can save many many man-hours. But, i supposed it's difficult or expensive to find a programmer to write it.

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5. Re: Spreadsheets ; Can we do better?

ryanj said...

It's amazing how many businesses and organizations mess with a spreadsheet instead of developing a custom database that can save many many man-hours. But, i supposed it's difficult or expensive to find a programmer to write it.

Partly that's because programmers are mostly anti-social. When was the last time a programmer came to your business and introduced him/herself and left a brochure or card?

Another reason is that in order to write a custom app, the programmer needs to understand the task. Which means someone is going to have to explain the task in sufficient detail. In many cases, there is no one who actually understands the task, they just muddle thru until the numbers come out the way management wants. No one wants to admit this.

And, yes, it's expensive. Got to justify a one-time expense. Just doing the job faster and more accurately isn't justification enough, unless the person doing the job is the CEO and your program will free him up so that he can get in another round of golf. (This is a good sales approach sometimes)

If the person doing the job is not the CEO, it's easier to let some poor salaried employee continue to work unpaid overtime until the reports come out right*.

Note: right is not the same thing as accurate. I once wrote a program which surprised everyone by showing that the company was losing money every time they sold a certain item. After several hours of work with paper and calculator, verifying that the numbers were indeed correct, the project suddenly became 'unnecessary'.

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6. Re: Spreadsheets ; Can we do better?

irv said...

Another reason is that in order to write a custom app, the programmer needs to understand the task. Which means someone is going to have to explain the task in sufficient detail. In many cases, there is no one who actually understands the task, they just muddle thru until the numbers come out the way management wants. No one wants to admit this.

And, yes, it's expensive. Got to justify a one-time expense. Just doing the job faster and more accurately isn't justification enough, unless the person doing the job is the CEO and your program will free him up so that he can get in another round of golf. (This is a good sales approach sometimes)

If the person doing the job is not the CEO, it's easier to let some poor salaried employee continue to work unpaid overtime until the reports come out right*.

Note: right is not the same thing as accurate. I once wrote a program which surprised everyone by showing that the company was losing money every time they sold a certain item. After several hours of work with paper and calculator, verifying that the numbers were indeed correct, the project suddenly became 'unnecessary'.

You are 100% right in my experience! In my case though, the "poor salaried employee" was myself, and I am a lazy person by nature... if you can get the computer to figure it out, even if it takes you longer to write the program than doing it manually..
The "reports come out right" issue is sad but true... got the tee shirt ;) Customers would insist the report was wrong, because they didn't like the results (the bill!) so it needed a weeks work to redo manually. No more. The customers have copies of the program so everything is transparent.
Now the program is a "additional feature" that differentiates my company from the competition :)
That said, the amount of data validation and popups to make the program reasonably "user-proof" is large. More than half the source.

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7. Re: Spreadsheets ; Can we do better?

SDPringle said...

Spreadsheets, they invariably have column names A, B, C, that cannot be renamed and the first row people put the column names they really want but they cannot have because the column names are fixed as A, B, C. Not a big deal but still annoying. Another thing about spreadsheets is the way it interprets input: Put in "June 5th" and it will parse it as a string, you have to use the numeric only dates for input instead of what you feel like putting in. Suppose you want to put in a numeric expression like '10-4', well this will be interpreted as a date. When you really wanted 10 minus 4. Suppose you want to type in a range 9-10, well that will be interpreted as a date.

Spreadsheets are used as crude databases. We have database programs in Office suites but they are often overlooked because they are complicated to use. So, I hope I inspired you to write a killer application. By the way, I wont support you financially while you write this application. and I wont pay you a dime for your application after you have produced it. But I will give you lip service that you ought to do it.

Signed:

Open Euphoria User

FileMaker Pro is, AFAIK, the closest to what you are asking for. Even then, it takes a programmer to set it up correctly. After that, however, it's been my experience that clients can make minor changes to meet changing needs without crashing the whole thing.

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8. Re: Spreadsheets ; Can we do better?

irv said...

For anyone else who just clicked on that "link", this is the wikipedia entry for FileMaker Pro, and a list of alternatives can be found here

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