You're also correct, but I think miss the point as well. The spreadsheet isn't going anywhere. Curse it all we might, blame it for deaths or attribute any aspect of malignment to it, and you'd be right. But the spreadsheet isn't going anywhere.
Spreadsheet mistakes have been directly attributed not only to thousands of deaths but billions of dollars of mistakenly wasted money. Heck, in the UK alone, they have attributed billions of pounds and thousands of deaths specifically to spreadsheet errors and flaws, and that's not even counting the COVID-related issues from the article. Check this scary article: https://theconversation.com/excel-errors-the-uk-government-h...
There have been hordes of purpose-built apps that have aimed to replace the common spreadsheet for any number of tasks from inventory management to financial planning to even tracking nuclear weapons (true story: our nation's nuclear weapons stockpile is tracked in a spreadsheet). And yet, the spreadsheet is still here. The spreadsheet is the cockroach of all apps. At once utterly adaptable and seemingly indefeatable.
The spreadsheet is a horror show with lack of control, schema, and collaborative management. We surely can do better. But we haven't. Google and Microsoft have the best developers in the world who can do anything. And they have produced more spreadsheets. But spreadsheets are the bane of our existence! And yet they are still here.
The spreadsheet has survived from the mainframe era to the cloud-based era in pretty much the same form with enhancements. The spreadsheet is not going away, even with all the complaints in the article. The points are well made and well founded. But unfortunately they miss the point. 20 years from now we'll still be cursing the tyranny of the spreadsheets because of their utility.
It is very clear that they are useful but it is also very clear that they can be problematic. In Finance people check each number - multiple times per day - because there is no way to write tests in Excel. Sounds good? Until you can trust the people crunching the numbers, of course. Would you build a bridge like that? Or a building? I think it is worth to talk about this problem and, at the very minimum, inform people there are alternative ways to crunch numbers that are more reliable than Excel.
Spreadsheet mistakes have been directly attributed not only to thousands of deaths but billions of dollars of mistakenly wasted money. Heck, in the UK alone, they have attributed billions of pounds and thousands of deaths specifically to spreadsheet errors and flaws, and that's not even counting the COVID-related issues from the article. Check this scary article: https://theconversation.com/excel-errors-the-uk-government-h...
There have been hordes of purpose-built apps that have aimed to replace the common spreadsheet for any number of tasks from inventory management to financial planning to even tracking nuclear weapons (true story: our nation's nuclear weapons stockpile is tracked in a spreadsheet). And yet, the spreadsheet is still here. The spreadsheet is the cockroach of all apps. At once utterly adaptable and seemingly indefeatable.
The spreadsheet is a horror show with lack of control, schema, and collaborative management. We surely can do better. But we haven't. Google and Microsoft have the best developers in the world who can do anything. And they have produced more spreadsheets. But spreadsheets are the bane of our existence! And yet they are still here.
The spreadsheet has survived from the mainframe era to the cloud-based era in pretty much the same form with enhancements. The spreadsheet is not going away, even with all the complaints in the article. The points are well made and well founded. But unfortunately they miss the point. 20 years from now we'll still be cursing the tyranny of the spreadsheets because of their utility.
I close with a Haiku:
| Rows and cells, alas |
| What makes your simple structure |
| So very useful? |