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Trillions of decisions have been made off a tool that has poor error handling and data consistency issues. Blame is not entirely on either the user or the softw

Trillions of decisions have been made off a tool that has poor error handling and data consistency issues. Blame is not entirely on either the user or the software, but the tool is too trusted without validation. [Study that was at the core for Europe's austerity and European debt crisis contained excel errors when fixed showed the inverse of original hypothesis.](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel-depression.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel...) Programmable commands instead of a data grid would be huge improvement to quality but people use excel in many ways. Python is out of reach for most people. SQL would be an improvement as well. I assumed airtable or similar would replace excel over time. But the sunk cost for existing report and the sharablity seems to keep excel in control.

woah 4y ago
I think that more precision over application of formulas would solve a lot. Arrays are mapped over by copying the code for each array element by dragging it across a row of cells, and the arguments to the formula are automatically mutated based on where the code is dragged to. This can be error prone. More concrete definitions of where a formula should apply would be good, for example, leave the formula cell in one place and specify that one argument should come from this range of cells and the other from this range of cells, and the output should be mapped to this range.
thrtythreeforty 4y ago
Airtable really ought to be killing Excel, but the SaaS model combined with a stupidly low artificial row count limit (over 50000 rows is listed as "contact us for pricing") means that it will never achieve penetration into weird and wonderful use cases like Excel has. Like, my default is to throw a dataset I'm hacking on into an SQL database so I can actually query the thing. But no I don't want to upload my 400MB log file. I'll just use grep, or build a CSV and deal with Excel filtering. Airtable should be awesome at reducing the cost of database-ifying these random datasets to zero. But the sales constraints put it in this niche where it's not the default tool of choice.
- dhruvarora013 4y ago
  Yeah their monetization strategy is extremely puzzling. As a casual user I loved their Chrome extension that lets me grab data and put it into a sheet in a click but it only lasted as long as my Pro membership. All of the advanced features seem to be locked behind a subscription.
- oehpr 4y ago
  100% I found what Airtable is doing to be deeply attractive. But their costs and their lock in and their pricing model and it's just... UGH. Microsoft Access was a good idea with a terrible implementation. There HAS to be a unfilled niche here. nocodb looks to be the best answer so far? Because it ties to a backend postgres database, it can be used along side bespoke applications. It still needs development though. I'm watching it like a hawk.
  - TAForObvReasons 4y ago
    VC-funded SaaS wiped out any real possibility of a sane business model for a product in this space.
  - theallan 4y ago
    We are trying to answer this with CloudTables (https://cloudtables.com https://cloudtables.com) - which is effectively a GUI for my DataTables library with a Postgres backend. Current work is to address the row limit and allow millions of rows without needing to contact "sales" (me), while also not charging per user (I hate that as a customer). If anyone fancies giving it a go and dropping me some feedback that would be most welcome! There are some rough edges without question that are still being worked on, but I think it has some advantages such as being able to self host with your own Postgres instance.
    - shpongled 4y ago
      I just want to say thanks for DataTables - it's a fantastic library!
    - raju 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
conductr 4y ago
> Programmable commands instead of a data grid would be huge improvement to quality... Would it? At the end of the day, someone else still has to proofread and QA the commands/formulas/program or it's just blind trust that the decision is being made on. Trust (or ignorance) that the creator knew what they were doing and developed it in an accurate way before action is taken on the decision being made. The interface really makes no difference, it's the human component and "process" for creation that needs to be fine tuned. Things like the London whale situation was a process failure where one person had too much power to execute trades without oversight, review, QA, testing, etc. [0] All things that are pretty standard in a software developer's day-to-day but the rest of the world has not realized or adjusted to the fact that they are now software developers too. [0] Excel wasn't the problem with the London whale at all, they made a mathematical error "modelers divided by a sum instead of an average"
- Psyladine 4y ago
  Go farther. Would the results have ever been validated if the source of truth was not a universal format easily interpretable by millions?
  - conductr 4y ago
    I think what you're touching on is complexity and how many people tend to trust complexity because it's too difficult to validate and you must know what you're doing if you built something so complex. Even in a corporate environment, I use spreadsheets to support big decisions every day, the format is as you say universal and easily interpretable, but many people never go that far. They trust that I did it correctly and take the "output" as truth. If I screw up big ($), it might cost me my job, but is it really my fault if nobody else even bothered to check my work?
    - Psyladine 4y ago
      Bikeshed effect writ large, I'm afraid. It's not our fault, our brains are wired to find quick & dirty; simple not small is beautiful. But people also contemptuous of what they understand, and accept at face value what they don't. Michael Crichton, much disparaged in his later years for contentious political stances, had much of value to say in his Gell-Mann Amnesia Effects' "wet sidewalks cause rain" critique of how we parse information. Still, I'm glad it's transparent in this case and thus exposable. How much more is hidden, guarded jealously even, as though methodology was trade secret instead of, you know, the underpinnings of proposed outcome?
__mharrison__ 4y ago
I don't feel that Python is out of reach for most who are using Excel with vlookups. I do feel that most Pandas code is poorly written and thus not at all compelling to replace Excel. (My background is that I teach Python and Data Science to large corps.)
- gervwyk 4y ago
  Not sure I agree, but interesting, so who is your target audience in large corps?
  - __mharrison__ 4y ago
    Are you disagreeing with "excel is programming" or "most pandas code is bad"?
- abrazensunset 4y ago
  +1, the Pandas API is somewhere between mediocre and bad, and results in garbage code unless you use it in a carefully constrained way (which is admittedly true of many complete languages, much less libraries that organically evolved several tooling generations ago)
Dyac 4y ago
Give https://exploratory.io/ https://exploratory.io/ a look. It's free/cheap. It's a nice easy GUI wrapper for R and just works. I stumbled across it a year ago and now use it daily.

woah 4y ago

I think that more precision over application of formulas would solve a lot. Arrays are mapped over by copying the code for each array element by dragging it across a row of cells, and the arguments to the formula are automatically mutated based on where the code is dragged to. This can be error prone. More concrete definitions of where a formula should apply would be good, for example, leave the formula cell in one place and specify that one argument should come from this range of cells and the other from this range of cells, and the output should be mapped to this range.

thrtythreeforty 4y ago

Airtable really ought to be killing Excel, but the SaaS model combined with a stupidly low artificial row count limit (over 50000 rows is listed as "contact us for pricing") means that it will never achieve penetration into weird and wonderful use cases like Excel has. Like, my default is to throw a dataset I'm hacking on into an SQL database so I can actually query the thing. But no I don't want to upload my 400MB log file. I'll just use grep, or build a CSV and deal with Excel filtering. Airtable should be awesome at reducing the cost of database-ifying these random datasets to zero. But the sales constraints put it in this niche where it's not the default tool of choice.

dhruvarora013 4y ago
Yeah their monetization strategy is extremely puzzling. As a casual user I loved their Chrome extension that lets me grab data and put it into a sheet in a click but it only lasted as long as my Pro membership. All of the advanced features seem to be locked behind a subscription.
oehpr 4y ago
100% I found what Airtable is doing to be deeply attractive. But their costs and their lock in and their pricing model and it's just... UGH. Microsoft Access was a good idea with a terrible implementation. There HAS to be a unfilled niche here. nocodb looks to be the best answer so far? Because it ties to a backend postgres database, it can be used along side bespoke applications. It still needs development though. I'm watching it like a hawk.
- TAForObvReasons 4y ago
  VC-funded SaaS wiped out any real possibility of a sane business model for a product in this space.
- theallan 4y ago
  We are trying to answer this with CloudTables (https://cloudtables.com https://cloudtables.com) - which is effectively a GUI for my DataTables library with a Postgres backend. Current work is to address the row limit and allow millions of rows without needing to contact "sales" (me), while also not charging per user (I hate that as a customer). If anyone fancies giving it a go and dropping me some feedback that would be most welcome! There are some rough edges without question that are still being worked on, but I think it has some advantages such as being able to self host with your own Postgres instance.
  - shpongled 4y ago
    I just want to say thanks for DataTables - it's a fantastic library!
  - raju 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

conductr 4y ago

> Programmable commands instead of a data grid would be huge improvement to quality... Would it? At the end of the day, someone else still has to proofread and QA the commands/formulas/program or it's just blind trust that the decision is being made on. Trust (or ignorance) that the creator knew what they were doing and developed it in an accurate way before action is taken on the decision being made. The interface really makes no difference, it's the human component and "process" for creation that needs to be fine tuned. Things like the London whale situation was a process failure where one person had too much power to execute trades without oversight, review, QA, testing, etc. [0] All things that are pretty standard in a software developer's day-to-day but the rest of the world has not realized or adjusted to the fact that they are now software developers too. [0] Excel wasn't the problem with the London whale at all, they made a mathematical error "modelers divided by a sum instead of an average"

Psyladine 4y ago
Go farther. Would the results have ever been validated if the source of truth was not a universal format easily interpretable by millions?
- conductr 4y ago
  I think what you're touching on is complexity and how many people tend to trust complexity because it's too difficult to validate and you must know what you're doing if you built something so complex. Even in a corporate environment, I use spreadsheets to support big decisions every day, the format is as you say universal and easily interpretable, but many people never go that far. They trust that I did it correctly and take the "output" as truth. If I screw up big ($), it might cost me my job, but is it really my fault if nobody else even bothered to check my work?
  - Psyladine 4y ago
    Bikeshed effect writ large, I'm afraid. It's not our fault, our brains are wired to find quick & dirty; simple not small is beautiful. But people also contemptuous of what they understand, and accept at face value what they don't. Michael Crichton, much disparaged in his later years for contentious political stances, had much of value to say in his Gell-Mann Amnesia Effects' "wet sidewalks cause rain" critique of how we parse information. Still, I'm glad it's transparent in this case and thus exposable. How much more is hidden, guarded jealously even, as though methodology was trade secret instead of, you know, the underpinnings of proposed outcome?

__mharrison__ 4y ago

I don't feel that Python is out of reach for most who are using Excel with vlookups. I do feel that most Pandas code is poorly written and thus not at all compelling to replace Excel. (My background is that I teach Python and Data Science to large corps.)

gervwyk 4y ago
Not sure I agree, but interesting, so who is your target audience in large corps?
- __mharrison__ 4y ago
  Are you disagreeing with "excel is programming" or "most pandas code is bad"?
abrazensunset 4y ago
+1, the Pandas API is somewhere between mediocre and bad, and results in garbage code unless you use it in a carefully constrained way (which is admittedly true of many complete languages, much less libraries that organically evolved several tooling generations ago)

Dyac 4y ago

Give https://exploratory.io/ https://exploratory.io/ a look. It's free/cheap. It's a nice easy GUI wrapper for R and just works. I stumbled across it a year ago and now use it daily.