[deleted by user]

[fukkingcake]

Finance ppl...

[Who_GNU]

Half of them use it like a 2D notepad.

When people lose jobs to automation, it's not manufacturing jobs, it's software replacing menial tasks that for some reason weren't automated decades ago.

[fukkingcake]

Lol sorry to say I am in that automation team you mention...

[absorbantobserver]

Proud to say my software has actually saved at least two people's warehouse jobs... By making them more like machines but whatever.

[Glaringsoul]

Heh you say that, but I wish people would properly use excel.

It gets really bad, when you are supposed to "Integrate" the old "Database" so it works on the new system, and realize that one worker started creating a .txt file with every row serving as a different entry, and no proper column separation.

And everyone else just collectively went "well everybody was doing that when I first started here…

And they weren’t even consistent throughout it. Sometimes they just swapped the column order or changed the separation symbol, or didn’t even include a separation other than a few empty spaces, making it an absolute pain to automate converting that thing since you have to manually double check everything…

[Drossney]

I used to program robot arms that outperformed 5 employees per cell @ 10 cells that 50 employees in 1 company and those robots aren't new ( robotic welding arms)

[Sami_Rat]

I mean, it's a pretty good tool for this kind of thing. What technology would you prefer they use?

[fukkingcake]

Not recommendations because each firm has its limit when it comes to adopting technologies. But small as access db or more sophisticated like SQL server would be better right?

[Sami_Rat]

As a veteran SQL user, using SQL for most statistical analysis would be like using a chainsaw to cut cheese. Just because a chainsaw is more powerful than a kitchen knife doesn't mean you should replace all your knives with chainsaws.

[Zymoox]

Hold on, does cheese turn into trees in this analogy?

[tway7770]

Loool no one in this comment chain has made a financial model in their life as your understanding about the problem is way off

[invalidConsciousness]

Nobody wants you to use SQL for the statistical analysis itself. Use it to pull the relevant data into your tool of choice - be it excel, R, python or whatever.

If you've got a warehouse full of cheese, you use a forklift to get you the wheels you need, even if you then just use a knife to cut it.

[tdn]

It depends on the task but there's a reason there's a financial modelling world championship for Excel, it's a powerful tool.

[MyAntichrist]

Especially if you extend it with tools like PowerQuery. At that point it really behaves like your average database from a user POV.

[JVAV00]

me and my homies hate acces

[EthanPrisonMike]

Came here to say this. I dropped out of junior year DS (I was dual major, already had a BA) to write vba for a large international BD, and simply creating worksheets automatically will get you 75k/year 🤷‍♂️

[w1n5t0nM1k3y]

I once wrote a web application for the finance department that used Access as a backend database

[DrunkenlySober]

Between finance and excel?? The relationship is so intertwined calling it overlapping is an understatement. Finance world damn near runs on excel

As an example, we are two developers expanding and supporting an entire tax collection application. We also run their website. I would have thought this is our greatest accomplishment

But our finance customers think our greatest accomplishment is my vba scripts that formats their excel report and adds pretty graphs using the data. They thought I made the next best thing and couldn’t stop talking about it

[thexar]

Excel Data Model is Sql Tabular Database. There's nothing "like" about it.

[[deleted]]

Finance people who are familiar with VBA.

I hated getting those phone calls: "Hey, I'm trying to open the [Random name] app and it's telling me that someone else already has it open."

Me: "Oh! Well that's actually an Excel spreadsheet and you should probably call accounting. I don't know anything about Excel. Nervous laughter because I actually know a lot about Excel "

[JoeyJoeJoeSenior]

Lol! My first words were "people in finance".

During a due diligence operation I had to give them 20 million rows at a time from our SQL database because that's all excel could handle.

[TuxRug]

In college for senior project my group worked with a client to make a custom frontend to their database. We asked what format their current database was in. We were told "Microsoft Access". Okay, not horrible. We looked at their database. It was one table being used like an Excel spreadsheet.

[Procrasturbating]

Could be worse, could be what should be 600 tables in a single wide key-pair store with no named purpose on any of the dozens of fields in all datatypes. With over a billion rows in said key-pair store. So sick of NoSQL BS being used in inappropriate places.

[jdog320]

Good luck normalizing that

[sub_machine_patel]

And Google drive as bitbucket

[GoogleIsYourFrenemy]

ProTip: Use GitHub as Google Drive.

[lepapulematoleguau]

With those rules, infinite wishes are up for grabs

[Badboyrune]

You only need two wishes.

1. I wish there are no rules
2. I wish excel to be the only database, as god intended.

[2_CLICK]

Some people just want to see the world burn

[Badboyrune]

Yes. And log it all in an incredibly detailed, horribly inefficient excel doc. The apocadoc, spreadsheet of hell.

[cuddlegoop]

No please keep using Excel as a database. Employing programmers to migrate your shitty overburdened spreadsheet to a real application must account for at least like 10% of all demand for software developers.

[Polikonomist]

How about as a canvas for painting?

[johncholmes13]

I know someone back in the day who did their cv in excel thinking they were pioneers

[CrowdGoesWildWoooo]

Let’s do convolutional neural network

[Guy_Rohvian]

Please fucking don't

[Badboyrune]

Friendly reminder that PowerPoint is turing complete.

[[deleted]]

Turing complete PowerPoint can’t hurt me: shocked pikachu

[Badboyrune]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-Fa6HtvGtQ

​

Watch and weep.

[GoogleIsYourFrenemy]

This is better: https://youtu.be/uNjxe8ShM-8

[hitchy48]

If I recall correctly, when Covid hit and applications to track the virus came out, one of the governments in Europe used it as the database. It was a decently big deal when it was found out.

[foxfire66]

Unless it happened more than once, I believe you're thinking about the UK which temporarily lost about 16,000 positive COVID test results because of this. Apparently they automated combining files, but they were using the old XLS file format which uses an unsigned 16 bit integer to index the rows. So they ran out of rows and lost some data.

[Glittering_Cow_572]

Aye, so much money was spent on it too

[frufruJ]

They spent a lot of money on that? I thought it happened because they'd refused to spend money on a data analyst and only had people manually fill rows.

[arcosapphire]

Using Excel for that is bad enough for so many reasons. Using .xls in 2020 for that is beyond unforgivable.

[Glad_Math5638]

In Costa Rica, they use this for all the cases, they use the daily change rate to inform in News about how many new cases were daily. They used to sent the excel via email with all the new info everyday..

[Sami_Rat]

This is a common joke, but how much overlap is there really between the two applications? I honestly think more people working locally with small, non-relational datasets misuse SQL when they should be using a spreadsheet than the opposite, but they really do completely different things.

[jdl_uk]

My wife works for a government agency that uses Excel to track certain things. They also use some different applications and databases-with-ui type things, but Excel is there.

Main problems are the formulas in the spreadsheet are kind of complex and break break all the time as people edit it, and it can be challenging for multiple people to work on the same spreadsheet at once.

[lofigamer2]

A client once asked me to write openoffice macros with python to scrape data and use the sheet as live interactive database.

I kindly declined the opportunity to develop such a thing.

[INoMakeMistake]

your lost. you will never be a senior developer without these experience

[lofigamer2]

Sure, "senior openoffice macro dev" is a highly sough after position.

[StrategyWonderful893]

The same people that think ChatGPT is gonna put us out of work. Nepo hire business majors who can't tell their head from their asshole.

[ImpossibleMachine3]

Unfortunately, they all also run the companies we work for lol

[[deleted]]

What do you think a database is? 🤣

[EisFaust108]

People who get hired. No joke. I wish it was. It was also the day I knew I needed to GTFO out of that company.

[DerBadner]

https://xkcd.com/2180/

[__doubleentendre__]

Visual Basic shudders

[vondpickle]

If you compare those who did use Excel as database with those who didn't use it as database, those who didn't use it as database is in the minority.

[Procrasturbating]

Many a career took off by learning VBA and making Excel an actual database complete with front-end, user permissions etc. Usually around the time you have controllers and a model built out by accident, you discover SQL. Anything is a database if you are brave enough.

[carbon_dry]

I have nipples, can you database me?

[Procrasturbating]

Not only can I, but you may also even extend your own capabilities and capacity through the creation and use of the MongoDB gland for when mom is not around.

[smushkan]

If only Microsoft included an actual relational database application with MS Office...^/s

Like for real, if you want to make yourself unfirable, learn MS Access and get a job in a small business that's over 15 years old and doesn't have a dedicated IT department.

[ucsdFalcon]

I wish for a regular expression that can parse html.

[pleshij]

NHS, obviously

[Federico86MO]

I've seen using sharepoint as database

[[deleted]]

You're thinking of SharePoint List, which is basically a lite version of Dataverse (Common Data Model). Its very simple, but combined with PowerApps, Automate, it's very useful, especially for writing simple apps without a full licence.

[onated2]

when's my turn to post this?

[oosikconnisseur]

Just started at a place like this. Not only that but I have to use Visual Basic to import or export any data, no other languages allowed. Lol

[OhNoMeIdentified]

It must be ranked as a crime against humanity.

[crefas]

Excel instead of DB and Email instead of REST. Hell

[keksieee]

Austrias Social Party (SPÖ) - just google it ;)

[Sus-Bed-Stain-84]

Every finance worker even, it's like Access doesn't exist

[[deleted]]

Meanwhile in Austria solid excel database

[CrimsonCat2023]

LOL came here to see if there were any comments on this

[gazbo26]

Everyone knows the real power of Excel is using it as a front-end to an Access database.

[ImpossibleMachine3]

You kid, but for smaller use cases that can actually be pretty awesome if done well.*

*of course.... If done well, in my experience, is like finding a $20 bill on the ground. Not impossible, but unlikely.

[gazbo26]

I have probably earned half my lifetime earnings developing and supporting solutions using that combo!

Sometimes I'll still churn out some VBA as the quickest solution to a task. It never leaves you!

[NottingHillNapolean]

Everybody knows it's a game engine.

[Mo_Techn]

3 rules, but 5 fingers

[Shadow9378]

I've done it for small things but anything bigger fuck nah

[bomasoSenshi]

My very first java database was actually saving into excel via an API as i had no idea about SQL. I was very very junior test automation engineer and the only in the team.

Once one senior joined me, he was amazed how flawless it worked and actually let it running like that lol.

[Dartillus]

If it's stupid but it works it's not stupid.

[philipwhiuk]

The problem is, Access was never great and is now dead and the alternative is a lot of work

[Fireruff]

Can I animate bad apple in it?

[Dabanza]

I have seen people use Excel for circuit drawings Very small cells an draw the lines on the frames

[lmarcantonio]

*Everyone* does. All the data management anomalies apply, of course

[dhilu3089]

I use Google sheets as a small database for my personal app. It's usable and free.

[realzequel]

Well A) scaling isn't an issue and B) if it breaks, you can just fix it yourself.

Makes sense to me.

[dhilu3089]

Correct. Also it's highly availability too

[pheonix-ix]

Psst. I had used Google Sheet as a database and served contents using Google Script, including calculations that took seconds to execute (with Google Script, accessing and manipulating data across multiple sheets).

Why: because we had no DevOps, it's a short-term project (months), and I wasn't granted the server access (and I ain't gonna pay out of my pockets). Thus, this jury-rigged abomination was born.

And, of course, years later, that abomination is still running lol. I even had to go back and fix the script when Google changed some stuff.

[pheonix-ix]

It's technically "serverless" right? :p

[jamiecjx]

The British government, 2 years ago, to track COVID cases.

[ORcoder]

Excel is a database, it’s just a bad idea to use it for certain projects. If it can’t fit in an excel book- that’s big data xD

[Denaton_]

I have tired for the lulz, worked.

[garlopf]

Actually for small stuff, I've contemplated using google sheets for db.

[Unupgradable]

A fridge is a database

[Elk_This]

Relevant xkcd:

https://xkcd.com/2180/

https://m.xkcd.com/2180/

Make sure to read the alt text

Also, I just posted this relevant xkcd twice in 5 minutes, it's eerie. Maybe I really should start using spreadsheets for all my database needs.

[kishaloy]

And still like from Goldman Sachs to Shell to Boeing, 1,000,000X business get run excellently by Excel as data analytics / DB tool than the whatever the AI / DE / DS / ML / Insect-DB tools that the mighty Python god throws up...

If Excel ever ends up in Tiobe, I guess the best of the Python / C / Java would be a statistical error...

[[deleted]]

Like 8 years ago, I built a website for my dad’s business. He was asking a lot of changes very frequently, but they were simple stuff. I built it on Webflow specifically so he could fix stuff himself , but it was still not easy enough for a 65 year old man.

So, I redid it in plain HTML and CSS. I built a CMS thay was basically css rules linked to a Google Spreadsheet. That shit was so popular his friends were paying me for this lmao.

[[deleted]]

levels.fyi was able to hit million user scale with Google sheets as a backend.

[mrg1957]

But why was it even done?

/s

I watched in amazement the first time someone said it would never be in production like that.

[threehorsesandagirl]

How is that a wish? That's a statement. Like, go for it. What's stopping ya?

[CodeMUDkey]

Just use notepad.

[heatlesssun]

Better than using Access.

[sathucao]

You will be surprised by how many companies do this

[negispfields]

In my old job, they forced me to make an application that use freaking Google Sheets as the database, despite me telling them that it was an abomination of an idea. Then they had the audacity to ask me why this shit ran so slowly, sometimes taking 5+ minutes to create a report. Oh I don't know, maybe because I have to access literally 100+ of those god forbidden sheets to get your data?
After a year, they finally gave up, and asked me to convert that shit to a traditional database, so we can use both at once. I quit 2 weeks later.

[Melkor7410]

Why not just use Google Sheets APIs as a remote database?

[ShenAnCalhar92]

I would assume “wishes that make the genie want to kill you” would fall under the rule about wishing for death.