Post AZ6hYfaD8D2lIntvY8 by clive@saturation.social
(DIR) More posts by clive@saturation.social
(DIR) Post #AZ6NErAgL4DSMrEdeK by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-25T21:34:02Z
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What's the most common line of programming in history?I'd argue that it is ...=SUM()... in a spreadsheetFrom my essay on "Why Spreadsheets Are The Biggest Gateway To Coding": https://clivethompson.medium.com/why-spreadsheets-are-the-biggest-gateway-to-coding-ce233380889aIf you're not a Medium subscriber, here's a "friend" link: https://clivethompson.medium.com/why-spreadsheets-are-the-biggest-gateway-to-coding-ce233380889a?sk=a975f98ca343af41c25269e94592bddc
(DIR) Post #AZ6NZTJ2GSGOQqyM6K by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-08-25T21:37:42Z
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@clive I have a friend who is a weaver who loves spreadsheets for planning her weavings. I am pretty terrible at using spreadsheets for any purpose.
(DIR) Post #AZ6NlqVdox5Js3lkjg by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-25T21:40:00Z
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@artcollisions That's really cool!There's a community of digital artist who use spreadsheets solely for making art ... each cell a pixel, sometimes static, sometimes changing based on inputs
(DIR) Post #AZ6NxDJHOB5xlsPKqW by artcollisions@vis.social
2023-08-25T21:42:02Z
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@clive Oh, interesting! I know @enriquericos does pixel art, but I don't know if he uses spreadsheets.
(DIR) Post #AZ6P3dL3cz2WBnreYS by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-25T21:54:24Z
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@artcollisions @enriquericos one cool one here: https://mymodernmet.com/tatsuo-horiuchi-excel-spreadsheet-paintings/
(DIR) Post #AZ6PJIS33OaC2fbRlA by RoyBrander@urbanists.social
2023-08-25T21:56:22Z
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@clive Associated with accountants, the biggest fans are surely engineers, or, at least, engineers that hated coding.The first time I heard that "programmers are now obsolete by this new tool", it was an engineering professor talking about spreadsheets.He'd always hated that he had to write more lines to get data in, and then out, formatted, again, than he wrote of math models. With spreadsheets, the input/output/formatting is just there.You just write the engineering formulas. Done.
(DIR) Post #AZ6RsbNyqd4MoGfABs by mlanger@mastodon.world
2023-08-25T22:26:04Z
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@clive I got started with spreadsheets using Lotus 123 back in the 1980s. I very quickly became a Lotus jockey, creating macros that would run routines that could take hours, depending on the speed of my computer. Those macros were created with keystrokes for menu commands and after some intense "coding," I would dream about those keystrokes at night.When I left my job in finance, I got some gig work teaching advanced Lotus and later Excel in a corporate environment.
(DIR) Post #AZ6YF4P0FGoCtmEolc by BillBraine@newsie.social
2023-08-25T23:37:16Z
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@clive It’s actually20 GOTO 10;
(DIR) Post #AZ6bOgMWmP4f6AM5hI by bgrinter@mastodon.sdf.org
2023-08-26T00:12:25Z
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@clive how many spreadsheets are databases?
(DIR) Post #AZ6hMwU2TD8UF8QEUq by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-26T01:19:37Z
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@bgrinter In a sense, all of 'em
(DIR) Post #AZ6hTUAE9yWiRGH8z2 by RoyBrander@urbanists.social
2023-08-25T23:43:04Z
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@mlanger @clive Same here on the engineering side. But, didn't the coding, even of recorded keystroke macros, set you apart from the rest of the office?I think that, (aside from recording a half-dozen keystrokes for repeat data entry), not one spreadsheet user in ten makes macros.I liked creating Excel dialogue boxes, custom tools, with VBA, that would then be used by the other engineers to do very specific tasks really easily.But I was the only office Excel-programmer, for a long time.
(DIR) Post #AZ6hTUw5I2o8pgfMZs by mlanger@mastodon.world
2023-08-26T00:04:43Z
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@RoyBrander @clive I was definitely the only one in the office who could do it. I had a macro that would take files uploaded by 48 branch offices and combine them into a 100+ page report with all kinds of weird formulas and analyses the boss wanted. Took 10 hours to run on a 286 PC; they got me a 386 and it ran in 90 minutes. Never did much with macros in Excel. By then, I was self employed and didn't need to.
(DIR) Post #AZ6hTVbumWGgvQElmK by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-26T01:20:20Z
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@mlanger @RoyBrander Very cool hearing all these stories from you both!
(DIR) Post #AZ6hYfaD8D2lIntvY8 by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-26T01:20:30Z
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@BillBraine heh heh yeah
(DIR) Post #AZ6heRZY8TERaQLSDo by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-26T01:20:44Z
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@enriquericos @artcollisions yep yep
(DIR) Post #AZ6jR6JU464DnQb0E4 by mranthropology@mas.to
2023-08-26T01:42:47Z
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@clive that and print('Hello, world!')are my only two lines of code I think
(DIR) Post #AZ6jf6MgfaNc0ilojA by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-26T01:44:29Z
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@mranthropology Both noble lines
(DIR) Post #AZ6lN6rQHtvuFBhA3c by blatanville@mastodon.online
2023-08-26T02:04:30Z
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@clive I miss20 GOTO 10
(DIR) Post #AZ6unZOHjf15qRl464 by mlanger@mastodon.world
2023-08-26T03:50:07Z
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@clive @RoyBrander Don’t get me started. I could tell stories all day. I think it’s a side effect of aging.
(DIR) Post #AZ6vP1kZG6X4Vy2eCe by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-26T03:56:11Z
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@mlanger @RoyBrander 😂
(DIR) Post #AZ6vjeuNNZKzklT2Yq by atthenius@fediscience.org
2023-08-26T04:00:36Z
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@clive Spreadsheets are a decent entry point, but are not as good at transitioning to more efficient programming. Of the Fortune500 execs that don’t know excel calculates… fewer know that the mindless point drag click drudgery of back office operations can be largely directly streamlined using Visual Basic— or even some other language. perhaps the biggest coding entry plus is the remarkable stability of spreadsheets through time. Learned it once 20 yrs, & you can use that knowledge today.
(DIR) Post #AZ73rjZOjLXiA315Mm by abosio@fosstodon.org
2023-08-26T05:31:44Z
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@clive Probably worth mentioning that after watching spreadsheets have all the fun for decades, documents asked to play too. So we have things like Jupyter Notebooks that mashup code and data and visualization.
(DIR) Post #AZ7EcUp0NfwBZXFlU8 by gatesvp@mstdn.ca
2023-08-26T07:32:12Z
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@clive I recently did a talk at an IT institute about career progressions and paths through the industry. When the typical questions about programming languages and tools came up, I answered with "Excel and spreadsheets".👨🔬: "Every tool or piece of software you develop has to at least be better than a spreadsheet implementation. Otherwise, just deliver the spreadsheet and call it done." 😄That usually catches people off guard.
(DIR) Post #AZ7r9urOO6Q48xjUkS by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-26T14:44:04Z
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@gatesvp Yep, that’s exactly right — make a spreadsheet the gold standard. If a separate piece of software can exceed what you can accomplish with a spreadsheet, cool … otherwise use a spreadsheet
(DIR) Post #AZ7rHMSYAl3nlhfBAW by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-26T14:45:21Z
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@abosio Yea good point! Jupyter is a wonderful midpoint between a document and a software d deployment
(DIR) Post #AZ7rW2mBdXTR47qi7E by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-26T14:46:47Z
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@atthenius Yeah very good point about the stability of spreadsheets over timeAnd yeah VBA was and is amazing at replacing rote clickwork!
(DIR) Post #AZ8Rvn4EGHZYDwrfKi by RoyBrander@urbanists.social
2023-08-26T20:41:20Z
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@mlanger @clive I'll throttle the specific war stories, but Maria Langer already told the big one with the consolidation of 100+ spreadsheets.THAT was when "spreadsheet programming" got serious - not the programming...it's when the RESULTS get serious.Hundreds of hours of manual work done same-day. Their ability to suck in other spreadsheets, pull the data together, summarize.Without a Maria or Roy, some poor low-level would be doing it manually, and we'd see it, become their hero.
(DIR) Post #AZ8Rvnr9KOhiffkjaK by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-26T21:35:18Z
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@RoyBrander @mlanger yes!
(DIR) Post #AZD63xVc64wXivxlNw by RoyBrander@urbanists.social
2023-08-27T17:38:48Z
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@mlanger @clive Not to pass along the software itself or anything (save by huge coincidence you do a lot of SQL with Excel) just to show how involved one can get in Excel programming.This is actual procedural programming with VBA, but the thing is that this enables regular users to use spreadsheet formulas and "functional programming" to do stuff they'd have to resort to code-programming to do otherwise.http://brander.ca/sqltoolshttp://brander.ca/TableWareSaved people from having to code..
(DIR) Post #AZD63yHpCpVY8SWGX2 by clive@saturation.social
2023-08-29T03:24:10Z
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@RoyBrander @mlanger Very cool!