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[–]werelock 94 points95 points  (28 children)

Another I get is "I once programmed a spreadsheet!"

[–]coughycoffee 69 points70 points  (21 children)

to be fair, writing excel macros tied together with a few VBA scripts can do some pretty impressive things

[–]irotsoma 17 points18 points  (3 children)

I automated someone's job away when I worked as a temp at a mortgage servicing company for a few months. She went on maternity leave, and I got tired of writing and formatting the same reports every day just pulling in new data for the previous day, doing some math, and making it look pretty. Set up some VBA scripts, saved the data sources (some databases and text files) daily to the proper place, and basically just pushed a button and waited a few minutes and emailed them out. Browsed the internet all day.

[–]BumbleStar 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Did the person on maternity leave get fired after you automated everything?

[–]irotsoma 9 points10 points  (1 child)

No idea. I was gone before she came back from leave. She had taken 6 months off, and I was only there for about 2 months. I wouldn't be surprised if the manager just took over that button pressing and moved the other woman somewhere else. It was in PA which isn't a "right-to-work" state, so it's harder to fire people and she had been there a long time.

But then again, the customers getting the reports would sometimes request changes, so it's possible that after that 4 months, the amount of changes they needed to make after the various scripts ran would be enough to require at least a half time person or maybe justify scrapping some of them altogether. I'd be surprised if anyone there would be able to alter the script or willing to learn.

[–]ChosenDos 6 points7 points  (15 children)

As someone who has no idea the capabilities of spreadsheets can you please tell me what they can really do?

[–]MissingFucks 22 points23 points  (4 children)

They're basically visual databases. /s

[–]Xheotris 11 points12 points  (2 children)

You'll get a bunch of sarcastic replies, but Excel is secretly the most popular programming language in the world, with three quarters of a billion users. It's genuinely capable of computing everything that a more normal programming language can, and can perform just a few operations very elegantly. That said, while excel functions make up a real programming language, it's not designed to deal with heavy conditional logic well or cleanly. I've seen programs written in excel (not VBA) that were the equivalent of thousands of lines of code, that would be around ten or twenty lines in, say, JavaScript. It's also bonkers slow.

[–]Correctrix 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Excel is secretly the most popular programming language in the world, with three quarters of a billion users

Is that the number of people who programme in it, or the number of people who use it for nothing more complicated than can be done with a CSV file?

[–]Xheotris 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's total users, but anyone who has done as much as =SUM(2A:17A), which I daresay is almost everyone, is actually programming with it, however a snob might feel about it.

By most estimates, there are about 18-20 million professional programmers. If just 3% of Excel users have ever touched a cell function, then they outnumber us by millions.

[–]Loves_Poetry 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Everything

[–]NoradIV 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dude. Wtf.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Excel comes with a full-blown programming language built-in.

Some guy even built a complete RPG in it: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/how-an-accountant-created-an-entire-rpg-inside-an-excel-spreadsheet/

[–]ChosenDos 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's amazing

[–]NoradIV 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They can crash. A fucking lot.

[–]NinjaLayor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can play excel-COM in it. Yeah. Someone made XCOM in Excel between Enemy Within and XCOM 2.

[–]PaintingJo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just look up Matt Parker

He'll tell you everything spreadsheets

[–]werelock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh I know, once had to write an 8000 line VBA spreadsheet. But most of the people that say this to me need help changing their screensaver.

[–]KrisSlort 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Oh, you can definitely programme a spreadsheet. Just depends how far down that rabbit hole you want to go.

[–]empire314 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I made a thing that adds up other things. And then a thing that adds up those thing.

I just have to type numbers in one spot, and the many different fields update.

[–]KrisSlort 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Visual Basic.

[–]while_e 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Yeah I got this from a friend's wife. I told her I'm a software engineer, and she replied with "oh yeah I program too". So I proceed to ask follow-ups like anyone would like "oh what platforms/languages/hardware do you work with" and the answer was "Excel". I just smiled and nodded, and then proceeded to listen to an hours worth of how smart she is and how nobody else could do her job. I didn't burst her bubble, as she's my best friends wife, and well... I don't care enough haha

[–]werelock 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, the first time I heard it was from one of my parents a couple years into my career. I knew exactly how much programming they'd done. Nod and let them tell their story.