this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] ForgotAboutDre 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Excel does too many things. A better price of software would do less.

[–] deweydecibel 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

I can't tell if this is ironic or not, because it genuinely feels like Microsoft believes this when you look at the absolute disgrace "New" Outlook is.

For Microsoft, "Modern, sleek, streamlined" are just marketing terms for "We got lazy, made a less useful wed-based product, and you'll have to accept it, at the same price, while we save money on development."

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Those are different categories of problems.

Excel really does too much. Biologists literally renamed a genom because Excel kept turning it into a date. If any other database did that, the vendor would hear a friendly but stern "get fucked".

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

They're using a spreadsheet and getting burned when it acts like a spreadsheet. It's like complaining that a screwdriver did a bad job hammering nails.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Yeah, that's my point. Excel is almost never the right tool, but since it's doing so much, it can be used for almost anything, just in a very shitty manner. And in reality, it is used for almost anything.

[–] ForgotAboutDre 3 points 10 months ago

The reduced feature set in the web app is either development hasn't reached parity, or they want it to be just enough to compete with Google sheets but keep people using the windows app.

A better price of software would be several different tools. But Microsoft want to keep the features set and backwards compatibility and the users don't want big changes so the messy mishmash it what results.

Excel is used as a app builder, a database, plotting tool, table formatting, dashboard, visual basic environment, simulation environment there's probably many more uses. I think it was supposed to be a calculator and accountancy book combination.

If anyone knew excel (or spreadsheets in general) would become what they did they would design it completely differently. A database that links to different pieces of software would be much better. That can't exist now, because the markets consumed by excel.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Outlook really has a lot of obscure features that not many people used. I think it's good for them to cull these less used features and later re-add them rewritten in a more supportable manner.

I also really appreciate the emoji-reactions because I don't have to type out a response expressing that I have read and acknowledge an email, I can just give it a thumbs up and move on, and they don't receive a whole email to read, they just see that it got a thumbs up and can move on too