Re:An alarming number of scientific papers contain Excel errors
by TeMPOraL on Saturday August 27, 2016 @08:49AM
(#12372132)
The primary reason Java (and other programming languages) aren't, and won't be used instead of Excel is that Excel is interactive. About the closest you can get to that with a programming language is Lisp, but it's still half-way there compared to a spreadsheet, when you can see the data all the time as it is placed and updated.
The second big reason is that Excel just works, and all programming languages usually require installing tons of bullshit - editors, toolchains, whatever - to be able to work somewhat conveniently in them, and the moment any link in the bullshit chain crashes, you're SOL if you're not a developer. Yeah, we sometimes underestimate just how much minutiae knowledge we have that allows us to fix random problems in our tools without even thinking for a second about it.
So maybe Excel is unfit for purpose, but it's still the most fit for purpose tool available.
Re:An alarming number of scientific papers contain Excel errors
by wtbob on Saturday August 27, 2016 @09:13AM
(#12372206)
> About the closest you can get to that with a programming language is Lisp, but it's still half-way there compared to a spreadsheet, when you can see the data all the time as it is placed and updated.
I think that Kenny Tilton's Cells was an attempt to get that sort of interactive update functionality in Lisp. I was never able to figure it out though.
Re:An alarming number of scientific papers contain Excel errors
by contravariant on Saturday August 27, 2016 @09:30AM
(#12372265)
Using Java probably won't help you with the numerical issues though, unless you happen to use a good statistical library.
Yes, it's true Excel is used for a lot of big important things, but I'd agree with GP it's not very good at them. Moreover, I think most people who use Excel for big important things, would agree it's not good for it--they get stuck in that situation when a small spreadsheet grows big over the years. Lack of version control, limited modularity, and no ability to unit test make large spreadsheets error-prone, and Excel tends to barf on you when you push it too hard (seems to be a number of crash bugs and performance bugs that never get fixed).
Excel is incredibly productive for quick analysis and making charts. But it's really not a development platform and it's really not for heavy lifting.