Comments on: Spreadsheets are code: EuSpRIG conference.

By: JohnOS

JohnOS — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 11:47:11 +0000

Totally agree that spreadsheets are code, especially the pricing and risk spreadsheets I’ve often worked with on trading floors. My own view is that a big part of the problem is that spreadsheet “code” is trapped in a desktop user interface that does little data validation, prevents significant automation, and exposes the “code” to all users. Imagine if every business user of a Java application was also a Java developer with access to the source code! That’s how it is with Excel. I believe we can take a big step forward if we take spreadsheets off the desktop and run them on a server. That’s what spreadserve.com does. In trader speak I’m “talking my own book”, of course!

By: David McKee

David McKee — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 10:15:39 +0000

My main argument (although perhaps “rant” would be more accurate!) is that spreadsheets are barely running with ‘current’ tools. Things we just take for granted — copy-pasting code from StackOverflow, being able to see your code trivially, local variables which have names that don’t magically change — these don’t exist in the Excel world! They need dragging kicking and screaming into the early 90’s. 😛

And we should *never* be happy with the state of current tools. Out of irritation and discontent grow the pearls of “well of *course* you do it this way”!

By: Sam Thursfield

Sam Thursfield — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 13:48:03 +0000

You’re absolutely right about spreadsheets, but I’m not so convinced that there’s actually anything to “fix” here. I fully understand how to code and yet, I still can’t actually get computers to do what I want very easily. And I still find myself going to conferences where people talk about how things are difficult with current tools and some solution is needed to make things better … 🙂