As far as large software programs go, is Excel the highest quality...

As far as large software programs go, is Excel the highest quality? It's mind blowingly powerful and I can't remember ever having an issue with it.

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Excel is good at what it does. It's not 'amazing' software though - 3D CAD programs are more impressive, technically speaking.

Excel is pretty good.
At least until microsoft puts the poo in loos in charge of it and they fuck that up too

Excel is pretty good, but I'm not sure I'd describe it as mind-blowing. Array formulas (I think that's what they called) could be improved, they're almost unusable sometimes. Being able to extend it with scripts is pretty good though.

It's not bad, but some things like translated formulas are beyond retard.

I don't think Excel is particularly good, it's just that the competition (OpenOffice and so on) is mind-blowingly bad.

This desu senpai. In my experience they are some of the most stable programs.

>OpenOffice/LibreOffice isn't as good
When will this meme die?

This.

There are many features that Excel is missing. But for what it does, it's pretty amazing. You can even build a flight simulator or Sudoku solver with it, check this out:

>makeuseof.com/tag/7-fun-weird-things-can-create-microsoft-excel/


But it's true.

Every few years I give OpenOffice/LibreOffice a new try, because I really don't like M$ products.

But even if we ignore the clumsy design of both, they just don't provide all the possibilities and the flawlessness of Excel..

I worked with Excel for many years (coding VBA) and I have only once had an issue with it which I had to find a workaround for. It's pretty damn hard to break Excel and it works flawless with a lot of stuff.


The only things that come to my mind right now are that if you open REAL huge XML files, Excel can get stuck because it loads the complete XML-DOM. For this kind of stuff I use Notepad++.

Have you even tried their scripting editor?
It's a half-finished mess. It even seems like they haven't touched it in the last three years or so...

I prefer R.

I use LibreOffice and it's ok. I believe Excel may have some features that are necessary for office stuff, but I don't think average Joe would really need it to calculate his taxes or whatever.

Do you really need to script in a spreadsheet application?

>he didn't play "Who wants to be millionaire" written in VB script in excel

Yes.
Also, in other applications, like painting applications.

Depends..

Do you want to klick one button to access a database, get the informations you need, aggregate it, put them into a cute graphic, put those graphic into a pdf and mail it at the management per outlook?

No probably not.

Who would use such an application???

i hope they soon replace macros in visual basic with c#

Want some rye? course you do!

They tried and for the most parts failed, because it required installing VS + SDK.

why would you use excel for that?
and why would you use outlook to send an e-mail? and an automated one at that

Wouldn't inventor be more impressive?
It has excel as a dependency, so it can automatically do the same and a lot more.

No one's mentioned Wolfram Mathematica yet?

But in my opinion, OpenStack is the most powerful enterprise software I've ever seen. Of course this whole discussion is subjective, I think OpenStack does a looooot to help running a business that uses a lot of computers.

No. Do not do this.

mathematica isn't even the best proprietary math tool.

hey, give me my matches!


That would be heaven.

But unfortunately it will never happen, M$ doesn't want users to write great programms with the Office package.

It was jsut an example. It's so damn easy to control Access or Outlook from Excell using VBA, I dounbt that any other langauge can give you that.


I never heard of OpenStack, sounds interesting..

But the cool thing with excel is that it's so low level:
-> open a file, put fomular in, create graph.. every body can do that, even managers.

And still you can do coding or use it as system for accessing databases and stuff.

>i hope they soon replace macro language X with general programming language Y

what's better?
matlab is octave's bitch and afaik Mathematica > Maple

Anyone who thinks LibreOffice Calc is anything but pure shit compared to Excel simply hasn't had to use them both extensively. LO is pure shit compared to Office and I am saying this as a huge Microshit Windows hater and semi-freetard (semi freetard because I have a job).

Mathematica is the only proprietary software I'm using as there is no FOSS alternative that even comes close.

Define "best".

Octave is most definitely Matlab's bitch and neither are comparable to any symbolic calculation system.

For what you are doing.

The scope of most symbolic calculations systems do not overlap enough for a reasonable comparison... the answer you give is always going to depend on what you are trying to do. Someone doing number theory or algebraic geometry would say Sage is best. Someone doing general relatively would say Mathematica is the best. Maple has its strong areas too. I would say Mathematica is probably the most extensive but its license also makes it the most painful.

In what way is Octave Matlab's bitch?
Octave is actively maintained and treats Matlab incompatibility as a bug. This means it's basically a perfect drop-in replacement. It's a clone, a free clone that stops you from having to pay for Matlab to use their features.

Use R.

It's excel on steroids.

I use python+pandas
It's pretty good

>It's so damn easy to control Access or Outlook from Excell using VBA, I dounbt that any other langauge can give you that.
yeah because no decent language would want to do that

>For what you are doing.
That will be true I suppose. Besides functionality though, a problem that all FOSS projects seem to have is documentation and consistency.
>its license also makes it the most painful
You mean pricing? The student license is cheaper than MS Office. and the home isn't all that high.

Matlab is significantly faster in may may ways but particularly when it comes to multithreaded functions.
Matlab plotting is significantly more well developed and more fully featured.
Matlab's has extensive toolboxes which bring it's functionality far past that of Octave.

Octave is a fine piece of software but it is just cheap matlab which is better in pretty much all aspects apart from price and freedom.

Have you seen how much enterprise and university licenses are for Mathematica?

wolfram.com/mathematica/pricing/industry-individuals.php

wolfram.com/mathematica/pricing/colleges-universities-individuals.php

There is a reason the student licenses for Mathematica are so cheap — they just want people dependent on it so universities and enterprise companies have to pay for it in some cases.

Bare in mind these are per individual. Obviously they get a discount for site licenses but it isn't that much (ie a university of 50,000 might only have 200 serious Mathematica users and their enterprise discount might take the price down effectively 100 users say (probably not that good). The university would still be paying over $100,000 per year for Mathematica.

It used to be even worse before they changed to a subscription model. Excel is nothing compared to this per user.

Simulink, toolboxes

Excel 2003 would crap out over medium complex sheets. Had to export and load it in OpenOffice to make it work.
Very sad.

>VS + SDK.

You can compile single source C# code with Powershell with the autoload of the assembly and that doesn't require VS. However there is no inline debugging when compiled this way.

>Not playing superior PowerPoint Jeopardy

That's not how they did that, user. You still needed VS plus a special SDK to get to the specific part of COM. It is a pain in the ass.
That what you describe is a pain in the ass, as well.

All installed Office applications can be accessed through Powershell as that supports both .NET and COM types without VS so it leaves me thinking including VS is a just a hacky fast attempt at this.

>All installed Office applications can be accessed through Powershell as that supports both .NET and COM types without VS so it leaves me thinking including VS is a just a hacky fast attempt at this.

Probably another early time M$ failure at coming with convincing ways to install/bundle their shit.

However, even, if they had integrated it the right way, it fails as a macro language for multiple reasons. VBA fails as well, but for less reasons.

Pretty much the only thing Micropajeet did right.

>Visual Studio
>SQL Server
>.NET
Microsoft products meant for developers or businesses and not for consumers are actually pretty good.

Since they bought them from third party companies.
Also, NAV seems too much like a clusterfuck.

Business analyst here.

Excel is good in some ways, and totally shit in others.

Excel for OSX in particular is physically painful to use when handling large datasets.

One you learn that Pandas is way way way way more powerful and can handle far larger datasets, you begin to see how incredibly limited excel is.

Some of the syntax is also a pain in the dick (e.g. and() / or() operations).

I think the main thing that annoys me about it, however is:
>normies want job
>put down 'advanced excel' on CSV
>HR retards who can't use excel don't call them up on it
>they get hired
>literally don't know how to find something in a sheet or filter columns
>analysts end up having to do retardedly basic tasks for salespeople/HR/customer service etc.


Anyway, I'm just venting, it's actually okay software, and all its competitors are fucking garbage, but Pandas and Numpy are SO much nicer to use if you're doing any serious work.

My nigga

I actually like R, but python/pandas/ipython is patrician-tier.

Need to read more of based Wes' book on python for data analysis actually

Most people her can't understand the differnce between a programm with WYSIWYG-GUI like Excel and a statistical library..

>Hey I like PowerPoint
>Better use Qt, is far more powerfull!

Guys, serisously..

>CSV
You're thinking about Excel too much lad.