[lug] my latest guilty pleasure -- Linuxhaters Blog

[Nate Duehr]

On Jul 25, 2008, at 9:18 PM, David L. Anselmi wrote:

> Nate Duehr wrote:
>> Nope.  Never loaded compwiz, and don't care.  Do we have a  
>> reasonable replacement for Excel or Visio yet?  No?  Okay, I'll be  
>> over in my virtual machine doing some real work... sorry.  Got  
>> things to do.
>
> What do you use Excel for that you can't use OO Calc for?  I know a  
> guy who's a wiz at Excel (and Access), maybe I should have him show  
> me what real work in a spreadsheet looks like.  (Pity that he  
> doesn't have an easy way to version control his macros.)

Heh... you'd be flamed by Linuxhater... "Yeah, because making sure my  
macros from Excel work in a replacement for Excel is less important  
than version controlling my new broken macros."

I use Excel because my boss does.  He sends me stuff in it, and the  
company graciously provides a working laptop with WinXP and Excel on  
it for my use -- a machine that isn't my problem if it breaks... they  
pay someone to fix it too.  Therefore I just click on the stuff and it  
works.  Anything else would be a waste of time.

Sure, if I were home, I'd be using Apple's spreadsheet thingy or OO or  
something maybe... and I do.  But home spreadshheets are often simple  
things like "can I afford to put less into my 401(k) and save for X  
after taxes?" or something silly like that and the only other person I  
need to share it or have interoperability with is my wife... and she  
can walk over and look over my shoulder at it if I say, "Hey hon...  
look at the numbers for this."  None of my home stuff requires any  
particular spreadsheet technology.  (Hell, I can do it with a piece of  
paper and a calculator, or even long-hand division if I'm really bored.)

The stuff I get at work, someone spent time on in Excel, and I am  
usually just a receiver/reviewer of the data and results.  Boring  
reports about uptime/downtime, number of RMA's, yadda yadda.

I'm guessing that people that really need the advanced features of a  
spreadsheet, also don't have time to be coding one.  But that's just a  
guess.  :-)

So Excel "works for me" in my work environment.

I've watched Linux lovers at work load up secondary machines (not  
surprisingly IT doesn't support them) and read these things in OO.   
Macros break, formatting breaks, all sorts of things break -- and the  
guy is still happy he's "using free software" to look at it.   
Whatever.  I got things to do...


> Are you working on replacements for Excel or Visio?  I have a  
> thought about the former, but it would have to allow simultaneous  
> manipulation.

HA!  You think I'm a programmer?  This fallacy that the source is  
available so "anyone" can fix it... is just that.  An idiot like me  
messing with a professional programmer's code is bound to make a mess  
of it.  I'm not a cocky 20-something in my parent's basement ready to  
save the world from that horrible evil "Excel" anymore.  Got things to  
do that make more sense for my time and efforts... some of which are  
charitable or help others (lest I get called a jerk for not  
contributing to society or something by an open-source zealout) but  
aren't accomplished by me writing code.

No one's working on a good replacement for Visio that I've seen.  I'd  
send 'em money, but... oh... I already sent money to buy Visio.   
(GRIN)  Guess they'd better start a business, make something BETTER  
than Visio and then ask for my money.

Again, I'm not a software designer, so asking me to code a replacement  
for Visio is the open-source community's way of saying open-source is  
not willing to take on the hard challenges, I guess.  (And I have no  
problem with that... I'm not taking it on either.  But it's reality.)

Every once in a while I open up Dia to see it hasn't made any serious  
progress toward anything that can make complex drawings.

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com