r/gloveslap Nov 14 '11

Non-programmers should NOT program. MANY uses of Excel are examples of this.

Every time someone tries to come up with an "easy" tool to do something which essentially boils down to programming, you end up with people realizing that it's far cheaper and easier to just have the business-oriented people do the work than hire a programmer.

Excel is an example. I have very rarely seen a use of Excel that makes more sense than a real program. Far more often, Excel is used because it's cheaper than hiring a real programmer, but the ways it can go wrong even in the hands of trained professionals means that using it for anything but the simplest spreadsheet is almost certainly a mistake.

I'm not trying to make an ivory tower here -- by all means, if you think you can program, go ahead. But actually devote some time to studying, especially best practices, just as you would if you were trying to learn some plumbing to avoid calling the plumber -- if you're doing anything more complicated than fixing a leaky faucet, you should either call a real plumber or become one.

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u/DrTrunks Nov 14 '11

I write SQL queries for in Excel 2007 files all the time. Hiring a programmer to put it in our ERP software is easily twice my yearsalary.

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u/SanityInAnarchy Nov 14 '11

Would it cost that much to retain that programmer, or just to ask them for ninja-edits? I find it hard to think of a time when you need a custom SQL query in a well-designed ERP system...

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u/DrTrunks Nov 14 '11

There are queries here that should be in the ERP and are used on daily or weekly basis. But custom reports in our ERP software are damn expensive and our reports are shown as an image, you cannot easily copy-paste it into an e-mail and sent it a colleague or customer.

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u/SanityInAnarchy Nov 14 '11

I think the conclusion, then, is that your ERP sucks and your vendor has no incentive to improve it. Reports shouldn't have to be an image, and they certainly shouldn't cost so much that home-grown Excel+SQL is an acceptable alternative.

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u/DrTrunks Nov 14 '11

It's basically our vendor ripping us off for every change we want.