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Comment by delusional | Hacker News Reader

Excel is a dead-end road. I view all software as a vehicle to achieve more software. In other words, the solutions of today become the platforms of tomorrow. To that end, anything made in Excel is completely worthless. You can get some way by using excel, but at some point you want to build something on top of it, and at that point you will have to throw your entire excel solution out the window.

Excel sheets are nothing buy a worse version of bash scripts, at least in my opinion. At least bash scripts let you plug them into something bigger using standard process operations.

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Spreadsheets are a great way for non-programmers to prove an algorithm or calculation. I always encourage non-technical people to start in a spreadsheet, because if they can model it in a two-dimensional spreadsheet, a programmer can very easily extract that out into working code. Spreadsheets are a perfect working reference.

I suspect you've never worked in a non-software business environment. Your statements live up to your username. I'm sure you're an intelligent and skilled person, but you're speaking outside your wheelhouse right now.

LOL at that second sentence :)

> To that end, anything made in Excel is completely worthless.

I suspect this lady and her employer find worth in this approach, which would make your assertion incorrect.

I've also seen numerous $100k+++ "proper" software projects advocated by people who share a similar mindset as you, when a mildly complicated spreadsheet that could be built in a week or two could accomplish the same thing and more.

You took your logic train too far. Thousands, nay, millions of people and groups stop somewhere past "I need to table some data, do some calculations and conditionals and dashboards" and before "We need this to be a multi-user application with app and data tiers".

Bash scripts don't visualize. Bash is harder to learn than Excel.

Go to vertex42.com and tell me that everyone who could ever use any of those templates will invariably need to throw it all away and ask a developer to build a custom tool to replace it.

The OP's application is a bit of a shoehorn for a spreadsheet, but do you foresee alternatives to excel beating it at its own game at some point in the future?

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