• SandbagTiara2816@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I’m not a power user, so I’m often frustrated by Excel trying to do things I don’t want it to and by its abundance of features that I’ll never use.

    And at least at my workplace, a lot of work processes use poorly-designed Excel spreadsheets for critical tasks, because it’s such a simple way to manipulate data.

    I also find that when I need to do more complicated data analysis, Excel starts to become limited, and I find Python to be a more powerful and flexible tool.

    • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      3 months ago

      And at least at my workplace, a lot of work processes use poorly-designed Excel spreadsheets for critical tasks, because it’s such a simple way to manipulate data.

      I also find that when I need to do more complicated data analysis, Excel starts to become limited, and I find Python to be a more powerful and flexible tool.

      Capability is a double edged sword. Any tool that is capable of doing something is going to be used by someone to do that thing, regardless of whether it should be. Excel gets abused and used for things that it shouldn’t be frequently in corporate environments because of its capabilities. I can understand being frustrated by that.

      I use Excel for reporting and analytics because it makes manipulating and visualizing data very easy. Especially if you know what you’re doing. No need to write a UI or worry about portability between workstations, etc. At the end of the day it’s a tool. A very capable one. Like any tool, it’s not the right one for every job.

      • Zorsith
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        I use excel because its stupidly easy to output a shitload of objects with properties (computers/hosts in my case) to a CSV via powershell and sort through the data.

    • MissJinx@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      3 months ago

      ohh I see you can also use some ACL type of application. Excel is amazing but can’t handle databasis, it has a very small limit