220
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
220 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
73567 readers
3104 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I have a spreadsheet that has been going for 20 years, across 2 companies, and hundreds of people.
Thousands and thousands of lines, going back like an ice core sample. Zooming out is wild.
"What's this layer?"
"Oh that's when Terry worked here"
Nowhere here is it implied that they were using it instead of a database. They could run into this issue whether or not they were properly using Excel for what it is for.
It's a well known phenomenon. The title of the article even alludes to it.
What about the title?
Read the article. IMHO scientists were having problems because they were using it for a task it is ill suited for. The kind of program that is designed for storing large amounts of data and preventing accidental corruption of it is a database.
I think scientists would use Excel more for finding out information with their data, not for storing it. You know like looking for trends and plotting graphs and whatnot.
I think they use it for both. They end up using it as a database because they're familiar with it from doing data analysis. I've also heard of much more egregious examples, like a school using a giant Excel spreadsheet to track the applications of potential students. Need to track up to three references for each student? Make three of each column related to a reference! It's a really gross way of storing denormalized data without any of the ACID properties databases guarantee.
I read this meme several times trying to figure out what is supposed to be funny about it... Then I realized it's from Friends and based on a "joke" from that show. No wonder it wasn't funny.
Edit: mmm yes, your downvotes only strengthen my resolve. Friends is shit and has always been shit. So unbelievably unfunny.
Who shit in your cheerios?