Microsoft Excel is arguably the world’s most important piece of business software. Can it also be a sport?
  • megane-kun@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    39·
    5 months ago

    If the earliest sports were a way to practice skills needed for hunting or warfare, then making an e-sport out of spreadsheets is going back to the roots of sports. It’s practicing skills needed for your daily job.

      • bamboo@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        5 months ago

        In many cases you’re right. I manage some spreadsheets at work that are relatively small, have little/no automation, and are really just inventory lists with some notes on each item. Could be a CSV.

  • jpreston2005@lemmy.worldEnglish
    141·
    5 months ago

    The other day I couldn’t get my VLOOKUP function to work because the table I was trying to query hadn’t been designated “Table2” but “Table14” because…? Company laptop was dangerously close to putting a small dent in the closest brick wall. Doing this for fun? What?

    • miskOPEnglish
      151·
      5 months ago

      I think at certain point you’re kind of expected to switch to INDEX & MATCH. I did plenty of Excel macros for work back in the day and at similar point I just switched to doing things in Python.

        • miskOPEnglish
          8·
          5 months ago

          There are environments where Excel is used as glue that does faux-ETL for very unpredictable data which is so small in volume you don’t even consider a database. Also, database would mean MS Access which is just icky so it was used only when necessary.

      • CapeWearingAeroplaneEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        I just cannot imagine any task you can do in excel that isn’t easier to do with Python/Pandas. The simplest manipulations of an excel sheet pretty much require you to chain an ungodly list of arcane commands that are completely unreadable, and god forbid you need to work with data from several workbooks at the same time…

        • miskOPEnglish
          3·
          5 months ago

          If you’re reliant on third party add-ons you don’t have a choice. Bloomberg and Eikon are two examples that didn’t have a good Python API back then. Even after I started to use Python more sometimes I had to script opening up Excel itself, forcing formula refresh and exporting that.

          You also need to consider that average Joe at a big financial corporation knows Excel so he uses that for everything. People that know Python are more expensive.

          • CapeWearingAeroplaneEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            Oh, I definitely get that the major appeal of excel is a close to non-existent barrier to entry. I mean, an elementary school kid can learn the basics(1) of using excel within a day. And yes, there are definitely programs out there that have excel as their only interface :/ I was really referring to the case where you have the option to do something “from scratch”, i.e. not relying on previously developed programs in the excel sheet.

            (1) I’m aware that you can do complex stuff in excel, the point is that the barrier to entry is ridiculously low, which is a compliment.

    • Deebster@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      5 months ago

      I started but then I noticed the scrollbar and realised it’s a lot longer read than I have the attention for right now - to the “read later (yeah right)” pile with you!

      • fluxion@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        5 months ago

        FWIW they did a pretty good job covering an Excel competition and actually making it interesting/readable.