“We then hire programmers to re-invent the wheel in regard to UI with complete disregard for residency of Office Products – now that is ignorance in action in my opinion – not to mention a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

Amazing, isn’t it?

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen applications that have cost hundreds or even thousands of consulting hours to produce that barely manage to crank out a credible imitation of the spreadsheet matrix model.

I’ve even asked a few times:

“Did it ever occur to you to use Excel?”

The response is usually a mixture of confusion, prejudice and embarrassment.

This is true, but it has been around a long time and has not been hidden under a bushel either. I am told by my brother who is now a reputable developer in California, that he is just “one manual ahead of his competition…”

For the simple reason that Office products are resident on the vast majority of machines world-wide, is reason enough to maximize their capabilities; therefore maximizing technology dollars. I could be wrong I suppose, but I doubt it.

And it becomes more clearly when we put Excel in the context of corporationís business information systems.”

I am a tax assessor; we (statewide) spend millions in program development annualy. Currently we (county)are replacing our legacy system with a new one beginning with real property appraisal program. I have been convinced that a COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) appraisal program with a COTS back end database is all that is needed. The entire rest of our assessment and tax could be pushed through Office Products: with assessment and tax calculation in Excel and Tax Billing in Word. Fully 100% of office machines statewide have Office 2000 or better – and yet go unused for the most part. We then hire programmers to re-invent the wheel in regard to UI with complete disregard for residency of Office Products – now that is ignorance in action in my opinion – not to mention a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Additionally, I saw a woman in another department a awhile back using a 10 key adding machine to make calculations and putting the results in an Excel spreadsheet. When confronting her about what she was doing, her response was she didn’t know how to use Excel and didn’t have the desire for me to teach her – I believe I would have fired her on the spot had she been in my office… (I am certain to speak to her boss about it. What’s he thinking?)

Unfortunately public discussions tend to get “one-eyed” very fast as there are people with strong opinions and limited wider knowledge.

When lurking around Excel-related sites and public forums it’s obvious that a discussion about when and why to use Excel would be a highly welcome contribution.

I believe we all should take a more critical point of view.

After all, Excel is nowadays one of several tools in developer’s toolbox.

And it becomes more clearly when we put Excel in the context of corporation’s business information systems.

Kind regards,
Dennis

Now don’t go telling everyone how old I am

Doco, Stephen recommends the microsoft newsgroups – I guess microsoft.public.excel.misc might be a good place to fire off a discussion….

Having said that, as has been shown with slashdot, I guess you could fire off a post on any number of (excel) forums and spark a lively discussion

2p

Like the sensless comment that was made about not doing accounting with Python so why do programming with Excel? Lets see: Quicken, Peachtree, Springbrook aren’t those accounting packages? Would you do a full blown accounting system with Excel out of the box? NOT! You could do accounting with Python and Excel too for that matter…

I could be described as a power user of Excel and certainly not a developer or pro developer. I have purchased the book and appreciate it because it does not condescend as do other so called ‘Bible’ books (J-Walk an exception of course); it stretches the imagination based on how ‘pros’ do things – it is a challenge and I like that! Great Job!

(What I would like to know: is there a forum that some of the issues in the PED could be discussed [I have some questions concerning Chpt 10?])

I love when programmers who only know one language automatically assume that is the best one out there.

I used to swear by C++ until I realized how easy VB was. Now I am more willing to learn any language.