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Comment by fungiblecog | Hacker News Reader

The most important point about Excel in the work environment is that it's often the only tool people have so they make it do things way beyond what is sensible.

I'm a consultant and at every client (mostly public sector) I discover new ways of solving problems with Excel which would otherwise not get solved because the blockers to buying "the right tool" are simply too great.

At my latest client I've plotted their data on a map by colouring in cells as pixels using custom formatting and zooming right out so it isn't too blocky. It's too hard to get access to GIS software even though other departments in the same organisation have it.

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My favorite example of this was a team that needed to process more data than would fit into a normal Excel worksheet, so they wrote their application in pure VBA, reading from and writing to a custom file format, thus bypassing the Worksheet object entirely and using Excel just as a VBA runtime.

Like all such bespoke creations, it worked fine, and then the only guy who understood it left.

I've done plenty of this too.

Even the demoscene created at least two demos in Excel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO4DvM9KUyM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ6Q224UPkc

This is amazing. Thanks for sharing!

#mode13h

Were you using excel to translate their data to the map, or some external script to create the file? If it's the latter, why not use a plotting library? If it's the former, how did you acquire this unholy power?

All the data is in the spreadsheet. When it gets updated so does the map view (along with a bunch of other charts)

Not sure what you mean by plotting library but I cannot install any software so all I could use was Excel

I was thinking something like matplotlib or gnuplot, but I think we may exist in very different ecosystems.

But also, thinking about this a bit more, doesn't excel have the ability to plot geographic data?

Imagine using python without pip or conda. That's what using excel vba feels like.

> Not sure what you mean by plotting library but I cannot install any software so all I could use was Excel

I believe you, but isn't it baffling that your superiors couldn't recognize that giving you access to some Python or whatever would vastly improve your productivity, what you produce, and your happiness, all for a grant total of €0 and some de-rigidifying of arbitrary rules?

Generally these rules are institutional policy which are there for legal or security reasons. In a 1000-person organization, preventing 990 of them from installing malware is more important than allowing 10 of them to be more productive. A middle-manager does not have the ability to change that policy.

Good god, qgis wasn’t an option? I think I would rather draw it in MS paint than color an excel sheet like that.

No it's not hand-coloured - it automatically updates with the data

Awesome and amazing, I guess it might be a bit hard to troubleshoot or enhance from VBA after the guy left.

No VBA. Just lookups and conditional formatting

Wow. You're a creative person and they're wasting your energy on work arounds for absurd problems.

I've been relatively fortunate in my public sector experience: Management have allowed me to use tools other than Excel.

Yes, sadly. But the pay is good as a contractor and there are very few other options than public sector where I live

> The most important point about Excel in the work environment is that it's often the only tool people have so they make it do things way beyond what is sensible.

Some see a problem: "Don't use Excel"

I see an opportunity: "Evolve Excel so it's fit for this purpose".

> The most important point about Excel in the work environment is that it's often the only tool people have so they make it do things way beyond what is sensible.

> I'm a consultant and at every client (mostly public sector) I discover new ways of solving problems with Excel which would otherwise not get solved because the blockers to buying "the right tool" are simply too great.

I just don't get this. Most of the tasks where I've seen incredibly creative/perverse Excel gymnastics used in real life could have been solved far better with a bit of Python (or whatever). What "tools need to be bought" in the vast majority of cases?

> It's too hard to get access to GIS software

It took me a whole 5 seconds to google [1] up. As far as I can remember Anaconda can be installed without admin permissions on any PC and pulling the needed packages is a matter of minutes. Or a Tableau Online account with Tableau Creator desktop app having similar GIS functionality costs a whole 70 bucks a month, OMG. The public sector seems to excel in making up "blockers" to justify why shit doesn't get done.

[1]: https://blog.jupyter.org/interactive-gis-in-jupyter-with-ipy...

Depends on the org. Some firms block direct executable file downloads and scan for unrecognised code on the network, proxying them all through something like Nexus This is only going to become more common (and necessary) in the wake of things like the SolarWinds hack.

My Excel skills are a bit rusty but I remember the times when it was advised to not open .doc or .xls files from an unknown source because harmful VBA macros could be executed on opening the file. Did this changed lately? If not, how is opening an .xls file different from installing a non-tested python package from security perspective?

You're mistakenly assuming all IT policies stem from logic.

Hmm... I should have written making up "blockers" disguised as policies stem from logic. I consider the loop closed. QED

The “hardness” I’m talking about is not technical difficulty it’s the political difficulty. Sure I could have found other solutions but the acceptable solution for a tool that I can hand over to “the business” must cost $0 and only use authorised applications installed by IT. So that leaves Excel. That’s just the way it is unfortunately.

And yes they make up lots of shit. I don’t. I just make the best of a bad situation for people who need to get shit done despite the stupid policies.

I used to work in the public sector myself, so who am I to judge your way of making a living? But still, I don't like if public resources (work-time and tax money) are wasted just because of political reasons. But that is entirely my problem.

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