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Comment by AndyMcConachie | Hacker News Reader

Lotus 1-2-3 got people to use computers. One could argue that spreadsheets are the single biggest business innovation of the late 20th century. I don't think they're going away that easily.

I know people who type whole letters in Excel. I know an accountant in particular who I showed how to use MS Word for writing letters, but he prefers Excel. He writes full documents in Excel, prints them out and mails them.

Laugh if you want but spreadsheets are not going away in my lifetime.

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Sooner or later, all project management ends up in Excel. Doesn't matter what ticket or tracking tool you've paid for.

My experience has been that it always ends up in Google Docs. Collaboration in Docs is just so stupidly easy compared to emailing spreadsheets around. And yeah I've been through several cycles of this:

    start tracking in google docs, we'll get a system eventually. 
    -> OK we have bought a new PM system, let's start using it. 
    -> Everyone please start using the new system. Move your google docs there today. 
    -> I ... why is this still in Google Docs?
    -> Ok we've paid a bunch more money to get all of the requested features in our new system. Please please please start using it
    -> Sigh. Just share me on the Google Doc.

Purpose-built software systems allow you to ask a lot of important questions, but they don't allow you to ask all of the important questions. It's useful to have a tool that you can fall back on that gives you a basic representation of the data that you can manipulate with simple tools. For most people that will be a spreadsheet. You can also do it with *nix tools but they're really unapproachable for the uninitiated.

This is by no means observed in my experiences. It's certainly understandable how it could get there and what excel could do, but if that was a trend, its one thats faded.

Yes, it goes from Excel to Microsoft Project to the plotter to the wall. And then beings the multi-year process of watching the baseline and targets drift away from each other like ships at sea...

...and painters too! http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2013/05/28/tatsuo-horiuchi-excel...

At least Excel documents are somewhat portable.

I knew a guy who did everything in MS Works spreadsheet. In 1998 those files were pretty much locked to that software.

It's useful experience though, watching someone use a screw-driver to hammer in a nail. For him it worked - he didn't have to faff around with tab stops or margins. He just clicked a different cell.

I've met graphic designers and Engineers who use Excel as a weird Illustrator/Paint and/or Visio canvas.

And then there's this guy: Old Japanese Man Creates Amazing Art Using Excel http://kotaku.com/old-japanese-man-creates-amazing-art-using...

Not nearly as bad as the office monkeys who use Powerpoint as a medium of image delivery.

To their graphic designer ...

In the past I definitely found Powerpoint/Keynote to be pretty effective for mocking up rough wireframes.

in win95 days, Winword.exe wasn't particularly stable, nor ergonomically consistent. I quickly resorted to type documents in Excel, abusing table layout ala html4 days. A bit heavy but clear and solid. Excel was a workhorse.

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