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re: Formula 1 chief appalled to find team using Excel to manage 20,000 car parts
Posted on 3/21/24 at 8:44 am to rickgrimes
Posted on 3/21/24 at 8:44 am to rickgrimes
0
Posted on 3/21/24 at 9:13 am to rickgrimes
Lots of folks saying this or that is easy to do in Excel, and they may be right. But just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. When you have a bunch of formulas and functions in a workbook, you are in a very real sense writing a program. But it's the worst kind of program.
Your business logic is mixed with your data. This makes it impossible to version control the code and the data separately.
It's spaghetti code, there is no structure to it. It is a nightmare to maintain and test. Any change could have unforeseeable effects.
It ends up being a pile of technical debt that gets more costly as more is added to it and the longer a change is put off.
Your business logic is mixed with your data. This makes it impossible to version control the code and the data separately.
It's spaghetti code, there is no structure to it. It is a nightmare to maintain and test. Any change could have unforeseeable effects.
It ends up being a pile of technical debt that gets more costly as more is added to it and the longer a change is put off.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 9:15 am to WhiskeyThrottle
Agree, it’s probably one problem of many. But that said, it’s a big fricking problem when you don’t know what parts you have and where they are.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 9:23 am to rickgrimes
Posted on 3/21/24 at 9:29 am to rickgrimes
quote:
20,000 individual parts..
colossal Excel file
Meh. Starting at a 598,494 row file as we speak. Excel rocks if you know what you're doing.
Give him it's not the best tool for inventory management, but the "new boss" is acting like a little beyotch.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 9:45 am to BRIllini07
quote:
Excel has a limit of 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns per sheet.
Must have been an old version I was thinking about.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 9:54 am to rickgrimes
We manage parts on a battle ship with excel, they just don't know how to use it.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 10:07 am to rickgrimes
Having excel as your source of truth is asking for a bad time.
There's plenty of open source dbms and ELT tools available
There's plenty of open source dbms and ELT tools available
Posted on 3/21/24 at 10:10 am to rickgrimes
The race team was reportedly eating it's pregame meals on pivot tables.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 10:12 am to Nole Man
quote:20,000 car parts does not equal 20,000 rows in excel. Each part could have records for inventory, status updates, order history, engineering data, etc. 20,000 parts could easily mean millions of rows across many sheets.quote:Meh. Starting at a 598,494 row file as we speak. Excel rocks if you know what you're doing.
20,000 individual parts..
colossal Excel file
Posted on 3/21/24 at 10:13 am to CHEDBALLZ
quote:Yes, technical debt and the associated wasteful spending is a big problem in government too.
We manage parts on a battle ship with excel
Posted on 3/21/24 at 10:14 am to rickgrimes
If only they knew that like 98% of corporate America relies heavily on excel for day to day operations.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 10:17 am to Motorboat
Ironically, Salesforce is(at an extremely high level) a really complicated version of excel/db. Objects = tabs, columns = Fields, rows = data.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 10:50 am to kennypowers
quote:
Ironically, Salesforce is(at an extremely high level) a really complicated version of excel/db. Objects = tabs, columns = Fields, rows = data.
If you separate the data from the business logic, put the data in a database where it belongs, organize the business logic into testable and maintainable chunks that make sense, break out the presentation layer from the business logic and define a consistent interface between the two, then you'll have something worth relying on into the future. That's not a spreadsheet.
Spreadsheets are for presenting data to humans. They are not for storing data, and they are damn sure not a suitable place to store complicated code. Building your mission critical applications on top of a spreadsheet forces every development decision into this spreadsheet paradigm which is rarely a positive thing. It influences the shape of your data, the layout and (dis)organization of your code, limits your input and presentation options, and on and on.
If you want to be a proud Excel guru, don't be proud of your ability to add to a mountain of technical debt. Be proud of your ability to wade through the chaos and refactor the data and logic into systems suited for the application.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 10:54 am to rickgrimes
quote:
The Williams car build workbook, with roughly 20,000 individual parts, was "a joke," Vowles recently told The Race. "Impossible to navigate and impossible to update."
Just wait until his team has to frick with SAP. He will probably love it, but the people that actually have to work with kt? Not so much
Posted on 3/21/24 at 11:24 am to Korkstand
quote:
If you separate the data from the business logic, put the data in a database where it belongs, organize the business logic into testable and maintainable chunks that make sense, break out the presentation layer from the business logic and define a consistent interface between the two, then you'll have something worth relying on into the future. That's not a spreadsheet.
Spreadsheets are for presenting data to humans. They are not for storing data, and they are damn sure not a suitable place to store complicated code. Building your mission critical applications on top of a spreadsheet forces every development decision into this spreadsheet paradigm which is rarely a positive thing. It influences the shape of your data, the layout and (dis)organization of your code, limits your input and presentation options, and on and on.
If you want to be a proud Excel guru, don't be proud of your ability to add to a mountain of technical debt. Be proud of your ability to wade through the chaos and refactor the data and logic into systems suited for the application.
Listen nerd, it was meant as sarcasm. Get your arse back on the stand up call and story point my fricking requirements.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 11:32 am to rickgrimes
quote:
20,000 individual parts
quote:
colossal Excel file
I have Excels with 800,000 rows x 30 columns x 10 different tabs that all reference each other and flow into a user facing dynamic visual table with slider filters, etc. All formatted.
These people need Excel school.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 11:42 am to CatfishJohn
quote:I just threw up in my mouth
I have Excels with 800,000 rows x 30 columns x 10 different tabs that all reference each other and flow into a user facing dynamic visual table with slider filters, etc. All formatted.
These workbooks are almost certainly littered with multiple errors.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 12:02 pm to MSTiger33
quote:
Williams should worry more about designing something that isn’t a shite box than someone using excel.
Well that's what he's trying to do
Williams has been a better team since he took over. They put out a semi respectable car last year, much improved, and have one of the best drivers on the grid.
Posted on 3/21/24 at 12:33 pm to usc6158
quote:
The entire global financial system runs on Excel just fine
Eh, every place I’ve worked in the last 10 years (multiple Fortune 500 banks) have tried to massively restrict excel use as it’s an unsafe tool
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