[HN Gopher] Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660
___________________________________________________________________
Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660
Author : jimniels
Score : 127 points
Date : 2025-04-03 15:42 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quadratichq.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quadratichq.com)
| mywacaday wrote:
| I got 45690
| kubb wrote:
| Depends if you have American dates or normal dates, I guess
| psychoslave wrote:
| Only HN readership might take an iso order as normal I guess
| :D
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| ISO order is the correct order. 2025 April 7 or 2025-04-07
| or whatever. Human-read numbers are big endian and dates
| should be big endian to maintain that consistency.
|
| Also, America uses ISO order, we just use a comma. 2025
| April 7 is the same as April 7, 2025. Just like Bill Gates
| is the same as Gates, Bill.
| throwaway519 wrote:
| Username checks out.
| less_less wrote:
| > Human-read numbers are big endian and dates should be
| big endian to maintain that consistency.
|
| ... in English, anyway. A lot of languages are little-
| endian both for dates and for at least 2-digit numbers,
| if not larger numbers.
|
| (Just in case your post isn't a joke.)
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I'm half joking. We are writing numbers in big-endian in
| all the discussed formats (euro, american, iso) so I do
| think it makes sense to store dates in big endian to
| maintain consistency with that and lists and such.
| Otherwise people can do whatever makes sense culturally
| to them. Americans also write today's date like 4/7/2025
| which is obviously middle endian lol
| sim7c00 wrote:
| in my country you read and speak numbers 97 like 'seven
| and ninety'. this is normal.. :p
|
| aslong as we dont base our endianess on how french
| pronounce or read nrs i think we can work with it.
|
| that being said, i am for ISO notation if you want to
| order something in a list. year, month, day seems logical
| in this case as it will easily sort chronologically. i
| dont see another real reason why one would be better than
| another.
| lloeki wrote:
| > aslong as we dont base our endianess on how french
| pronounce or read
|
| If you're annoyed by French numbers (which come from
| Gauls counting in 20s) try numbers in Danish.
| azalemeth wrote:
| I am trying to learn Danish. I cannot agree with this
| enough.
|
| Consider "halvtreds," the Danish word for 50. A
| reasonable person might expect it to mean "half-three"
| based on pattern recognition and the fact that tre is
| three. But no! It's actually a compressed version of
| "halvtredsindstyve," meaning "half-third-times-twenty" or
| (2.5 x 20).
|
| This continues with "tres" (60), "halvfjerds" (70), and
| "firs" (80)--all using a vigesimal system that, if you
| studied French, seems reasonable.
|
| Except, well, the Danes don't properly sanitize their
| inputs. "femoghalvfjerds" (75) translates to "five-and-
| half-fourth-times-twenty," combining decimal and
| vigesimal systems with zero regard for foreigners...
| lloeki wrote:
| > "halvtredsindstyve," meaning "half-third-times-twenty"
| or (2.5 x 20).
|
| And you even took a shortcut there, AIUI it's "three-
| minus-a-half" (and that many "twenty", vigesimal as you
| said) for the "2.5", kinda like roman numeral `IX` is
| nine ("ten minus one" because the `I` is before the `X`)
| so it's really an oddball mix of multiple ways to count.
|
| (Source: my wife had a go with learning Danish as well,
| and we spent a little time going down that rabbit hole. I
| didn't even try, I'm sticking to easy things like
| Japanese)
| ruszki wrote:
| Or Hungarians for example.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Apart from Scandinavia, Japan, and a few other places.
| graypegg wrote:
| Probably MM/DD (2 Jan) vs DD/MM (1 Feb) since Excel uses it's
| current locale for parsing. (=SUM in en-US, =SOMME in fr-CA for
| example... making any SaaS app in Canada that exports xlsx
| files is always rough.)
| netsharc wrote:
| > any SaaS app in Canada that exports xlsx files
|
| Why would you need to localize it there? I'm sure it's the
| Excel the user has is the one doing the localization, so I
| can email my French colleague an Excel file and the formula
| in B5 which is =SUM() on my machine will be =SOMME() on hers.
|
| There's even sites for the dictionary of the function names,
| but googling "Excel french dictionary" gives you the top
| result that "That word in French is 'exceller'!"
| graypegg wrote:
| (For good reason) Language is a picky thing in Canada, it's
| very important (when selling to the federal government or
| Quebec) that both English and French localizations have
| equal footing.
|
| To open a en-US XLSX file in a fr-CA copy of Excel, you
| will need the en-US language pack. If you make this a
| requirement for a Quebec government entity... you will not
| get that contract.
| netsharc wrote:
| > To open a en-US XLSX file in a fr-CA copy of Excel, you
| will need the en-US language pack
|
| Are you sure? That sounds insane. Maybe if you're
| exporting a CSV where you insert the formulas as text,
| and expect the Excel to do some magic conversion..
|
| I'm pretty sure that XLSX file is "universally" openable,
| and the user using the fr-CA copy of Excel will see
| =SOMME( ... ), doesn't matter what locale the source
| Excel is.
|
| ChatGPT says:
|
| > The Office Open XML specification, standardized as
| ECMA-376 and ISO/IEC 29500, defines how formulas are
| stored in XLSX files. It specifies that:
|
| > Function names and formula grammar are stored in a
| locale-independent (invariant) format in the file --
| specifically, English-language function names.
|
| > You can find this in: ECMA-376, Part 1: Fundamentals
| and Markup Language Reference, Section 18.17 "Formulas"
| immibis wrote:
| ChatGPT is often wrong, so this is meaningless unless you
| go and find the actual source.
| netsharc wrote:
| Well, I'm sure you're smart enough to take that step
| given it's given us the directions.
|
| For the purposes of this conversation I'm pretty
| confident what ChatGPT said is correct, feel free to look
| it up in case you doubt it.
| gruez wrote:
| You're making the claim, so it's your job to prove it,
| not ask some AI and get your opponent to do the legwork.
| Moreover I skimmed ECMA-376[1] and it doesn't mention
| anything about locale-invariant encoding for function
| names. The only mention was for the CELL function, which
| could accept multiple values depending on locale.
|
| [1] https://github.com/QtExcel/ecma-376-5th/blob/master/E
| CMA-376...
| graypegg wrote:
| It might have changed since I last had to deal with this
| (I hope!) but excel, at least ~5 years ago, was storing
| cell contents as they appear in the function box in the
| UI. As in, `1,23` is 1 and 23/100 when read in fr-CA, and
| this would apply to the function names as well. So
| `=SOMME(...)`. Excel is smart enough to pick up on a
| locale flag in the file format, but obviously it then
| shows you a dialog asking you to convert it, needing the
| language pack.
|
| I also won't assume that we were making "good" excel
| documents. It's possible we were shipping badly made
| exports haha
| ralferoo wrote:
| I got "02-Feb" (as text, not a number) instead.
| adolph wrote:
| Google Sheets returns 45660 for '="1/2"+1'
| criddell wrote:
| I've never understood why they don't let you turn off automatic
| date parsing. That one feature has caused me more grief than
| anything else in Excel.
| netsharc wrote:
| Or at least have the option to disable any auto-"correct"...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...
| nabilhat wrote:
| This is supported in Excel. Select options > Data > Automatic
| Data Conversions > untick the boxes.
| matsemann wrote:
| How does it then work if I send the file to others. Is it
| saved in the file or will it just crash there?
| deepsun wrote:
| The others may have their own preferences to edit
| documents.
|
| It's like you edited one code file in a project, and you
| want everyone to switch to night IDE theme when they open
| that particular file.
| moring wrote:
| The meaning of a value (data type in programming lingo)
| is not a preference because it is objective, not
| subjective. It depends on the cell being displayed, not
| on the viewer in front of the screen.
| dreghgh wrote:
| It's not a setting which determines how a value stored in
| a sheet is interpreted. It's a setting which determines
| how inputs are interpreted before being stored.
|
| When you type eg "4/4", "4-Apr", "2025-04-04" or
| whatever, it is converted to a number based on your local
| date format. The cell has a date format applied to it so
| that the number appears as a date. If you send the sheet
| to someone else, it will display the same numeric value,
| using their settings to display it as a date.
| deepsun wrote:
| But GP isn't talking about value, they are talking about
| process of entering the value, so that _their_ editor
| (Excel) wouldn't convert it to something weird.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| More like I wrote some python code, and want to ensure
| the IDE doesn't change spaces to tabs. Night theme vs day
| theme is orthogonal to the code. Date parsing in Excel is
| not.
| prettymuchnoone wrote:
| hm i mean, python doesn't really care about indentation
| kind, as long as it's consistent...
|
| maybe writing a Makefile (which afaik really REALLY wants
| tabs), and want to ensure someone's IDE doesn't change it
| to spaces.
| mulmen wrote:
| Well, no, it isn't because Excel actually changes the
| underlying data too. It's more like changing the
| formatting of all the files in the project and deleting
| all the characters after the 80th column.
| deepsun wrote:
| Does it? I think it only affects when you enter the
| value, it doesn't change the underlying data that someone
| else stored in a doc.
| creatonez wrote:
| Come on, there is no room for anyone to have a preference
| here when an excel document is meant to be storing the
| names of genes and would never need to have a date or
| time in it, and can very easily get corrupted beyond
| repair if someone turns date conversion on. (For context,
| genome research is the whole reason this toggle was added
| in the first place.) Even something like Vim lets you
| enforce file-specific settings with a header.
|
| At the same time, we're clearly shooting ourselves in the
| foot by using Excel for this. This feature is just a
| hodge-podge solution to the problem of Excel not having
| strict data types. There should be enough cautionary
| tales (https://eusprig.org/research-info/horror-stories/)
| for everyone to know to avoid Excel.
| dreghgh wrote:
| The setting only applies when you enter or edit a value.
| It doesn't convert values which are already stored in a
| cell.
| acchow wrote:
| IIRC, conversion to date happens after editing the cell
| value.
| mulmen wrote:
| Not sure about an Excel workbook file like xlsx but for
| something like a CSV there is no way to attach that
| preference to the file so Excel will continue to mangle
| data as it always has unless everyone who touches it
| updates their settings.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Fun fact: This setting is only available since End of 2023
| [0]
|
| [0] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365insi
| der...
| criddell wrote:
| It's not working for me. I have those all unticked but if I
| create a new file and go to cell A1 and type 1/2, it puts
| 2-Jan in the cell rather than the text I want.
|
| If I then put 60/100 in cell A2, it doesn't do any
| conversion. Then put the formula "=Search("/", A1)" in cell
| B1 and copy that to cell B2, B1 evaluates to #VALUE! and B2
| evaluates to 3.
| dreghgh wrote:
| If you want the text "1/2" you should type '1/2
|
| If you want the value one-half you should type =1/2
|
| Not sure why this is controversial, Excel obviously has a
| syntax that's not focused on reproducing literal text.
| jstanley wrote:
| Meanwhile every time I import a CSV into LibreOffice I can't
| work out how to make it interpret my dates as actual dates.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| If it provides any comfort, Excel in turn is unable to
| properly open/save a CSV with the separator being a comma (!)
| unless the regional settings of Windows are not defining it
| as such.
|
| On german systems it's for example a semicolon, so a CSV is
| basically a "semicolon separated value" file, and there is no
| working solution around that...
| erk__ wrote:
| How do you make a comma seperated CSV with numbers with
| commas in them?
| fragmede wrote:
| you don't. use SQLite instead
| rickdeckard wrote:
| A comma separated CSV with decimal numbers uses a dot as
| a decimal point (US regional setting)
|
| A German CSV uses a semicolon as a separator and a comma
| as a decimal point (German regional setting)
|
| To create a US-style CSV on a German PC (with expectation
| to create a common CSV format) you need to change the
| regional setting of Windows before opening Excel...
| silisili wrote:
| The standard way is to wrap the field in quotes.
| mulmen wrote:
| Even worse is converting all numeric-looking strings to
| numbers, even if it requires truncation. If you use long
| strings of digits as identifiers, such as in billing systems,
| the actual transaction identifier will be mangled by Excel.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| I would be careful on dates not just before 1582 but before 1753.
|
| Great Britain and its colonies (which included USA) did not
| change to Gregorian until 1752 and also to confuse more changed
| the date on when the year changed from March to 1st January.
|
| If you are in Greece or Russia be even more aware as that will be
| around 1920 when they changed.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Fortunately, Excel doesn't support dates before 1900.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| The article is not talking about Excel at that point.
|
| But the program thw author is promoting says it does support
| dates before 1900.
|
| I would worry what it does for dates between 1582 and 1753 in
| Anglo countries.
|
| Basically you need to quote the date system as well as the
| date to get it correct. Even today there are countries not
| using Gregorian calendar.
|
| I record dates as Julian days (or modified to not need a
| 32bit number) which is what Excel stores just using a
| different base date.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| OK, I see what you're referring to in the article. My bad.
| WillAdams wrote:
| For all the details on that see:
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-
| rev...
| KWxIUElW8Xt0tD9 wrote:
| Britannica: "The Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed that Easter
| should be observed on the first Sunday following the first full
| moon after the spring equinox (March 21). Easter, therefore,
| can fall on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25."
|
| The correct date for Easter was a huge deal in the early
| Church. The Pope brought Easter back into conformity with
| Nicaea by reforming the calendar -- astronomical knowledge had
| improved a lot over the centuries.
| staplung wrote:
| You can see it on any unix system: $ cal sept
| 1752 September 1752 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
| 1 2 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
| 29 30
| dreghgh wrote:
| This is frankly the cal developers being cute. Nothing
| requires this and the proleptic Gregorian calendar would have
| made more sense.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| It really bugs me when computers try to figure out what you mean.
| What I mean is what I typed, and if I typed it incorrectly, I
| would delete it and type it again.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's probably the most pervasive and irritating recent (last
| two decades) trend in all of computing. "Did you mean?" NO IF I
| MEANT THAT I WOULD HAVE TYPED IT. "It looks like you are..."
| NO. "Are you sure?" YES.
|
| Computers need to stop second guessing users.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| I don't mind hints as much but what really sours me on a
| program is when it simply makes automatic edits to what I
| typed.
| SamBam wrote:
| What do you mean when you type in '"1/2" + 1'?
|
| Unless you just want to keep that text as plain text, it's
| going to be doing _some_ interpreting.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Devil's devil's advocate here for better interpretations:
|
| - 1.5
|
| - CONV_ERR: invalid operator for type TEXT
| jayd16 wrote:
| The answer is 1/21, clearly. I guess what it should do is
| give a green squiggly if the implicit conversions are
| suspicious.
| realo wrote:
| I cannot imagine any programming language interpret "1/2" as
| a day and month in that specific context.
|
| It takes a very special mindset to do that, maybe the kind
| that comes from a junior MBA manager, for example ... and
| even then I find that farfetched.
|
| It sounds more like one of those things that is observed, but
| some manager decided it is not high priority enough to fix
| right away. And then technical debt raises its ugly head.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| "1/2" is a string. So "1/2"+1 is either an error because of
| datetype mismatch (which is terrible UX for a spreadsheet
| or going to mean one of the following to scenarios:
| Date plus a day "1/2" concatenates with "1"
|
| The latter is wrong, the former, while unexpected, does
| kind of make the most sense here.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Excel allows bare strings, so `"1/2" + 1` is a string
| with embedded quotation marks. So that's a third option
| for what to do.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| True. And that would probably make the most sense too.
|
| A very good point you've made there :)
| dmurray wrote:
| Why would you favour "date plus a day" rather than
| "number plus a number"?
|
| I agree Excel has to guess, and in isolation guessing
| that "1/2" should be parsed a date is not a terrible
| choice, and that parsing the individual components
| separately is simpler and more predictable than using the
| full context that it's about to be added to a number. But
| evaluating to 1.5 would raise few eyebrows.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > Why would you favour "date plus a day" rather than
| "number plus a number"?
|
| Date _is_ a number though. It's only when we print them
| in a human readable way that they become anything else.
|
| Whereas 1/2 is an expression.
| fragmede wrote:
| Haven't seen "1/21" as an answer yet
| hnlmorg wrote:
| An answer where? Not sure I follow
| fragmede wrote:
| I just wanted to introduce "1/21" as an answer
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Ahh I see the confusion now. I suggested it in the
| comment you were replying to:
|
| > "1/2" concatenates with "1"
|
| ...and thought you'd spotted that and was saying others
| had disagreed with the concatenation way of handling +
| operators with strings.
| fragmede wrote:
| ""1/2" concatenates with "1"" != "1/21"
| hnlmorg wrote:
| That's literally what concatenation is.
| fragmede wrote:
| > Concatenate is a process of combining two or more
| strings into a single larger string. It's an important
| function in programming and computing because it allows
| you to store and combine multiple pieces of data when
| needed.
|
| https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/glossary/concatenate/#:~:tex
| t=C...
|
| That doesn't make those two strings equal, however.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Im not using the term in any weird way here. JavaScript
| even has a function specifically called "concat" and the
| 'cat' utility in UNIX is short for "concatenation"
|
| You can try string concatenation in 3 differently
| languages using the links below:
|
| https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_strings_concatena
| te....
|
| https://go.dev/play/p/Q5VPF2ANk7Y
|
| https://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_concat_string.asp
|
| Edit: who said anything about making both side of the
| operator equal? That's not how operators work.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| If I type in 1/2, that means 1 divided by 2, or 0.5. If I
| then type +1, that means add 1.
|
| 1/2 I should never mean any kind of date, unless I'm entering
| it into a field that has already been declared a date field,
| or I have written that, then declared the field to be a date
| field.
| post-it wrote:
| I think most people that enter `1/2` in a spreadsheet do
| indeed mean `January 2nd` and not `0.5`. In the wider world
| of people using spreadsheets, dates are certainly more
| common than fractions.
| lawn wrote:
| In Sweden we don't use that numbering scheme and instead
| use Day/Month Year (which makes more sense as it goes
| from smaller to larger).
| brassattax wrote:
| It would be interesting to know if your Excel correctly
| interprets 1/2 as 1st February based on your
| international settings.
| dreghgh wrote:
| Spoiler: it does.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| You're right about that, but maybe it should just treat
| '1/2' as '1/2' and only convert it if it makes sense for
| the current operation. If I type 1/2 and I want the date,
| then I want 1/2, not Feb 1, or Jan 2, or 01/02/2025, or
| 2025-02-01, unless again, I have explicitly specified
| that this cell is a date, and this is the format I want
| it in.
| dreghgh wrote:
| Dates are often typed with slashes. Numbers are never typed
| with slashes in almost all business applications, and
| practically all likely uses of excel. Why should excel slow
| down people wanting to enter dates, a very common activity,
| to allow for you wanting to enter a fraction?
| dugmartin wrote:
| The one that always bites me is Excel truncating the leading zero
| in US zip codes (they start with 0 in the Northeast US). I'm
| wondering if that would have happened if Microsoft was located in
| Boston instead of Seattle.
| ninju wrote:
| That because Excel defaults to treating numeric data as a
| number and leading zeros are extraneous and it will strip them
| off before storing the value (and it will right justify the
| display).
|
| The root issue is that zipcodes though numeric in content (at
| least in the US) should not be treated as number (data type)
| but instead as a text (string) value
|
| To tell Excel to treat this numeric data as a string you to
| either
|
| * Precede the value with a single quote (') - Excel will treat
| the rest of the data as a string (and won't hide the leading
| zeros)
|
| * Before entering the value set the format to TEXT which will
| tell Excel to take the entry verbatim with no inferring what
| the data represents (i.e. a number or date)
| mattigames wrote:
| It is the fault of zip codes, they should have been prefixed
| with the state code from the start (CA for California and so
| on), that's one of the reasons secret 2FA codes are sometimes
| preceded with one or two letters (e.g. Facebook uses FB)
| windhaven wrote:
| The issue with that is that ZIP codes don't map physical
| locations, they map the hierarchy of how the mail system
| does routing down to each post office and were introduced
| in the 1960s [0].
|
| As a result, doing something "from the start" wouldn't
| involve baking in comparability with the quirks of a piece
| of software written _decades_ later, and you'd also have
| issues with, for example, single zip codes spanning
| multiple states.
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code
| mattigames wrote:
| Well, then something that made more sense, like the
| letter Z for zip code.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| And instead of just copy/pasting tabular data, use the Text
| Import Wizard (my translation) under the Paste drop-down
| menu, and ensure appropriate columns are marked as text.
| johngladtj wrote:
| Leading zeros are not extraneous and should not be removed
| though
| ziml77 wrote:
| For numbers they are extraneous, for strings of digits they
| are not.
| otikik wrote:
| Aren't they exactly the definition of "extraneous"?
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Zipcodes aren't really numbers, they are strings. You can't
| meaningfully do math on zipcodes, so better to just treat them
| as text.
| recursive wrote:
| Yes, that's the point. But excel just incorrectly determines
| what you meant, and corrupts your data.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _But excel just incorrectly determines what you meant_
|
| How would you, if you were programming excel, determine
| whether the 5-digit number entered with a leading 0 is
| meant to be a zip code or not?
| sosborn wrote:
| Would keeping the leading zero cause any problems with
| future calculations?
| recursive wrote:
| I would not make any default determination until and
| unless there was a proactive user action. If there is any
| value that doesn't round trip through string
| serialization, don't allow it to be coerced without the
| user deciding to allow it, explicitly.
| vikingerik wrote:
| The postal service has learned and knows to compensate for
| this. If you mail something with four digits for the zip code,
| it will be treated as if it had a leading 0 and routed to the
| northeast.
| bombcar wrote:
| Zip codes I sleep.
|
| You don't want to know how many phone numbers in various
| databases show up in exponential notation. Not gonna talk about
| it.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Oh the hatred I had , I was making a financial estimate for my
| maternal uncle who is an engineer
|
| and I am not sure what the issue was , maybe it was leading 0
| part because ending 0 part would be preserved , it happened
| like 2 years ago.
|
| Also , I think the problem had actually been of libreoffice or
| whatever , oh yeah it was .00 , I wanted that .00 but it just
| removed it.
|
| Like I said , I don't remember it. and I don't even remember
| how I fixed it , but I only remember the pain because it felt
| so simple yet it doesn't .... , I really wanted to use some
| python esq interface on something like libreoffice as well
| because my uncle had a pdf which had a column for the material
| code (like something like 1.1.2) and then it had a description
| and a name and I Had to copy material code from 1.1.2 and then
| paste it.
|
| And he said that there was some other engineer in his
| department who had actually figured out where he would only
| type in 1.1.2 for example and on the next column, it would show
| up automatically , It was kind of crazy but I was thinking of
| creating a cloud service for such engineers which only had this
| (are there excel extensions ?) , or whatever because there are
| so many such engineers & my uncle would've definitely paid 10$
| if it made his job easier since he always used to force some of
| us kids to do it for him. He just couldn't figure out how to do
| it himself and I don't blame him.
| codedokode wrote:
| I wish Libreoffice didn't support all this legacy weirdness.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Curious to wonder how many academic papers/other kinds of
| analysis have perhaps come to incorrect conclusions because of
| these date inconsistencies!
| delecti wrote:
| I'm sure it's not zero.
|
| Related story from a few years ago:
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...
| cromulent wrote:
| > Unfortunately, news of the 1582 promulgation had not yet
| reached the developers of Lotus 1-2-3, so they assumed that 1900
| (being a multiple of 4) was a leap year.
|
| Joel Spolsky mentions a more charitable take on this from Ed
| Fries:
|
| > Lotus had to fit in 640K. That's not a lot of memory. If you
| ignore 1900, you can figure out if a given year is a leap year
| just by looking to see if the rightmost two bits are zero. That's
| really fast and easy. The Lotus guys probably figured it didn't
| matter to be wrong for those two months way in the past.
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
| staplung wrote:
| But that means Lotus 1-2-3 will be wrong again in 2100! We need
| to start a giant initiative to make sure everyone's Lotus 1-2-3
| spreadsheets are Y2K1C compliant. Maybe by then, we'll be able
| to afford more than 640K of memory.
| bunabhucan wrote:
| Am I remembering it wrong or did Microsoft use an undocumented
| call in excel to grant it more memory than was possible for
| early competitors who didn't also write the OS?
| fragmede wrote:
| they did. later during the Netscape antitrust case it was
| shown in court that Microsoft gave Internet Explorer internal
| Windows hooks that Netscape couldn't have known about because
| they weren't documented.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| On the other hand, when you've used excel enough and start
| getting 4xxxx results you know excel has parsed something as a
| date somewhere.
| ogogmad wrote:
| How do people feel about array languages (like J, APL, K, BQN,
| Uiua) versus spreadsheets?
| tetha wrote:
| In my experience, a big reason why people reach to excel is the
| simple visualization you can get once the data is in there,
| more or less validly. This would make either Matlab, or Jupyter
| Notebooks the bigger competitor.
|
| Except another reason to use Excel is the fairly low amount of
| programming knowledge you need. You can solve a lot of business
| requirements with a few point + click sums and averages,
| knowing how to fix parts of an equation while dragging and
| maybe some VLOOKUP as a stretch goal.
|
| That is something excel does very well for many low-technical
| people.
|
| Personally, I've found importing CSV and JSON files into
| postgres and working with views to export data tailor-made for
| excel visualizations to be a terrifying sweet spot of unholy
| and nasty power.
| ftbsqcfjm wrote:
| Excel's datetime handling is notoriously quirky. This post does a
| great job illustrating some of the common pitfalls and explaining
| the underlying representation. Key takeaway: be very careful when
| doing datetime math in Excel! Understanding the 1900 leap year
| bug is essential for avoiding errors.
| fragmede wrote:
| time for an update to "wat", which is a talk in this vein for
| JavaScript
|
| https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat
| eapriv wrote:
| Caution: this seems to be an ad for "quadratic", which promises
| "The spreadsheet with AI". I'm sure it will turn out much better
| than Excel, a spreadsheet without "AI".
| jader201 wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is FP news. I knew "1/2" was being
| interpreted as "January 2" as soon as I saw the title. This is
| nothing new, or even particularly interesting -- Excel (and
| Sheets) have been doing this date conversion from the beginning.
|
| This is just an ad for Quadratic, nothing more.
| josh-sematic wrote:
| It explains why the result is the particular value it is, which
| depends on the date serial number mechanism Excel uses and the
| mistaken 1900 leap year. I learned something, personally. Also,
| WRT the idea that "everyone knows" Excel will treat 1/2 as a
| date... https://xkcd.com/1053/
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Why would you type text if you need math to happen? Who cares if
| "1/2 + 1" are getting parsed wrong when you're typing them as
| text: you use Excel, so you know that math starts with "=". These
| are "user refused to even learn the basics" examples, not
| "cursed". The only cursing is anyone who's ever used spreadsheet
| software going "yes, that's how that works, why are you
| pretending that your own mistakes are the software's fault?"
|
| <Reads the last paragraph>
|
| Ooohhhhh it's an ad disguised as an article to bait people who
| don't use spreadsheet software into using _their_ , "more
| intelligent" spreadsheet software. Okay.
| issafram wrote:
| good explanation but reader beware; this is an advertisement for
| an excel like product
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| I feel like this needs to be shared in this discussion:
| https://imgur.com/VOjiRgx
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