Excel consulting firms

Where are they?
Where are the multi person Excel, or other spreadsheet, consulting/development firms?
If this technology is as important and useful as we think it is, and its hardly new (mature I think is the correct terminology (one step before legacy)), then why aren’t there more/any 10/20/100/200 person specialist firms?
Sharepoint has them, why not us?
(Is it because that is a ‘professional’ tech and Excel isn’t?;-))
Its like Excel dev is locked in the artisan phase and never going to move towards a more ‘engineered’ approach.
I’m not overly worried from a quality POV as I think if you get the right artisan you will get quality far beyond some tick list based ‘way’.
Its credibility that worries me, I think a few formalised big consulting firm standards would give the whole market a bit more clout. Even if they did conflict massively.
So where are they, and why aren’t there more?
cheers
Simon

Old dog new tricks

I have had a few set backs recently.

The Ribbon ruined my main work environment (that would be Excel for those that are new here), and Subaru released a new pig ugly Impreza that is even uglier than the hideous bug eye version they got ridiculed for a few years ago.

The deal was when I gave up my Ducati to be a responsible parent I could get a scooby doo instead. I did, and its ace, but its approaching time to change it and I can’t think of anything in the world that would make me buy that new bush pig (offers to the usual address though! ;-)).

That lead me to wonder if it was just a case of being and old dog not capable of new tricks. An accusation that I think was levelled at me when I first brought up how crap the ribbon is.

I was reassured then to read this Following broad condemnation of the conservative five-door hatchback shape which shows at least I am not alone among the scooby faithful. Rather than devalue the current model, I think the new one turns it into a classic, a bit like Excel 2003.

And back to computing, since Excel 2007 was released, I have changed browser to Firefox, changed email to Thunderbird, I now use Linux as my main web stuff os (on my magnificent Asus Eee). I’ve also moved to VS2005 (for C++) on my dev machine, reviewed Resolver including playing with Python and tried a bit of Ruby. And I have started poking around VS2008 have also been working with MS on Office 14. And of course I started this blog.

Outside computing, I’m training to be a football coach (thats proper football, involving foot and ball, not any kind of hand throw misnomer) and I have my eye on some other new stuff too.

In short I don’t think my dislike of the ribbon can be explained by some fear of change, or some inability to pick up new things. I think the only rational explanation is that is doesn’t support either the way I work or the work that I do. Other user interfaces do.

What new stuff have you been looking at this last 12m?

cheers

simon

Data types

Bearing in mind that cells in Excel worksheets are effectively variants is there any point in having an integrated programming language that is typed?

Is the whole ‘Option Explicit’ thing wrong headed for a spreadsheet automation language?

The modern trend seems to be towards dynamic typing, would that be a better option?

I’ve always properly typed all variables (and not with that $# nonsense either). But thats maybe a throwback to other types of dev work I have done.

When working with spreadsheet data in code should we worry about the underlying type?

And if so, should we also worry about it in spreadsheet formulas too?

What do you think?

cheers

Simon

10,000 hours part 2

Of course 10,000 hours wisely invested in becoming a spreadsheet guru isn’t going to be much help if you get a problem that would be best solved with a relation database right?

In skiing either you have developed the core skills to ski most terrain or you havent. You don’t get into a heavy powder field and think “bugger I should be snowboarding”. (Well I would actually, being more of a snowboarder these days).

In football you wouldn’t get to a position where you think “Damn I should have done this with a hockey stick”.

With spreadsheets, I have seen many ‘experts’ who can create a mega monster array formulas to solve all sorts of things. Way beyond what I can or would do.

To me any expertise has to include the ability to select the appropriate technology for the task. And potentially the confidence to say “you should do this in Java, for these reasons…I don’t do Java but I can recommend someone”.

Do you think being an expert in only one small area of IT means you really aren’t an expert in IT?

cheers

Simon

10,000 hours to be an expert

I was reading somewhere to do with sports of a known phenomenon that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve expert status in an activity.

The suggestion was those kids covering that many hours in football would almost certainly be excellent. In part time activity that’s about 10 years, which may explain why we have some superb players around 17. (club football tends to start around 7 in the UK)

In full time its about 5 years, which is why those with that level of experience of a product or business process are often considered gurus. Of course if your area changes fundamentally every couple of years, then its not going to be possible to achieve guru status in any current product.

There is another side to this that I first read in Code Complete - do you have 5 years experience, or 1 years experience 5 times? ie the progress you make depends how you invest your 10,000 hours.

And of course there is also the oft repeated phrase - practice makes perfect, but only perfect practice. Having watched tons of people practice and practice crappy ski technique, I am never surprised to see hundreds of skiers who have mastered the art of skiing badly. They have created a glass ceiling for themselves, that they will struggle to get through. Decent advanced training can fix this, but few intermediates take further training - taking misplaced pride in being self taught, just like many spreadsheeters?

Maybe people who code procedurally do the same thing? they will struggle to ‘move to the next level’ of object oriented coding? I’m not convinced thats valid as OO is often overkill, especially for spreadsheet based stuff.

What do you think?

Have you got 10,000 hours/5 years in? do you feel like an expert?

cheers

Simon

Browser wars

Did the browser wars kill VB?

I’m only asking as years ago (say 1999) it was fine to build intranets using VB script on the client, because you could assume they would be using IE.

I don’t hear so much of that now, it used to be ‘VB everywhere’, now it seems to be Javascript most places and C# where possible.

I’m wondering if the reduction in love for the VB family coincided with IE haemorrhaging market share to Firefox? (Ff marketshare is almost 30% in Europe, and gaining, fast).

Maybe VB fell out of favour a bit before?

Or maybe you don’t think it has?

Eusprig topic suggestions

I wasn’t planning on submitting a paper for consideration at this years Eusprig. But now I’m thinking I should. The deadline is looming however and I havent really got an obvious topic, thats where you come in…

The conf title is ‘in pursuit of spreadsheet excellence’ and papers need to relate to that somehow.

Last year we did spreadsheet hell, covering some of the cultural issues around corporate spreadsheet use.

The year before I did the process I use for reviewing client spreadsheets

The year before that I did some of the strengths and weakness of spreadsheets compared to other technologies.

[one possible one is User defined functions in XLM or something similar around function definitions]

So my question is, is there a topic you think I should cover, or that we should cover as a group?

Many of the Eusprig prior papers have been archived on-line here.

Please leave any suggested topic areas as comments, thx

(anything that incorporates my new logo suggestion is especially welcome!)

cheers

Simon

suboptimal

I was doing a bit of mechanicing the other day. As with any practical job I do, the first x amount of time is spent searching for the tools and materials.

On this particular occasion though it was more like x times 5 time spent ratching around looking for stuff.

The job involved mainly 10mm bolts (approx 3/8″?). I had no bother finding a 10mm spanner, in fact I had a couple. But a socket would have been much better for this job. Pictured is an 11mm socket - I found 2 of them, but I could not find the 10mil. In fact I think I have (had) at least 2 of them too, although it looks like I need another.

I spent a fair bit of time wielding the spanner thinking how much easier it would be with the socket. Both when I took it to bits, and again when I rebuilt it.

I find software dev to be similar, whether to go with the known, known to be poor approach, or spend an unknown amount of time and effort searching for a better way.

How might you describe that?

If (time/effort poor way) > (time/effort best way + time/effort to find it) * (1/chance of finding it)) then best way else poor way.

Or

If (time/effort saved best way - time to find it) * chance of finding it > 0 then try the best way.

In my case I reckoned the time taken to find it (if possible) would be way more than the saving so I just did it with the spanner.

I guess there is also a ‘preference’ factor (prefer researching to working badly), and maybe a ‘pressure’ factor too?

Do you have the same though process? how would you describe yours?

cheers

Simon

Why VBA is so rubbish

The last VBA post may have given the impression I’m some kind of VBA fanboi. I think it has its place, but it’s far from perfect. I put my definition in that post so I wont repeat it here.

I think its important to keep in context of what is out there live in the real world now, so I’m not going to suggest another language is better. In pure terms python (or your personal favourite language) maybe a better language for users to do basic automation etc. The reality is there is a lot of VBA code around, and more gets written everyday. I think the language would benefit from a few modern features, perhaps to support OO more fully, but not at the cost of backwards compatibility.

I’m also going to skirt around the issue of user competence. You get crappy code in every language, some languages may encourage it more, or may be more attractive, or more accessible, to developers of limited skill and experience.

It has been suggested that giving something as powerful as Excel/VBA to an unskilled user is the equivalent of giving a loaded rifle to a child. The reality, I would suggest, is a little less dramatic, as far as I know, no one has ever been killed by a poor quality spreadsheet, and very few companies have gone bust because of one. Yes SocGen just lost a stack of cash, but a person did that by trading badly, not a spreadsheet.

VBAs biggest fault?

I’d say its too easy to go beyond its design envelope.

For simple automating Excel and standalone complex worksheet functions (eg: the stuff Mike talks about) I think it is great. Its easy to slip from there to 10/12/14 KLOC systems, at which point I think VBA can work against you.

The other side to that argument is perhaps there is no realistic migration path, or no realistic alternative. That may or may not be true, but either way is not a fault of VBA.

Second - The editor. Frankly its so arcane I think Integrated Development Environment is a bit rich. If this just got updated to the VB6 one (which has more visible object model) add-in devs would fix everything else. Ideally though I’d like a VSTA style editor that writes proper VBA, or something completely compatible, in Excel 14.

That would also fix my third biggest fault - Microsofts lack of public love for VBA. Many devs are worried about its future, and hollow verbal assurances don’t cut it. A significant investment in upgrading the IDE, or replacing it with the VSTA one would settle the uncertainties for many.

Speeding up the call interface would be excellent too. As would allowing VBA UDFs to participate in multi-threaded calculation.

VBA’s reputation as a meddlers monster creation system (/toy language) hardly makes it the sort of thing you want to own up to at a party. The political correctness bureau solution to that is the change the name (eg ‘disabled’ went to ‘people with disabilities’ now moving to ‘differently abled people’) in general the ‘name’ gets longer as they use more circuitous language. So perhaps renaming VBA to something like AAS (Application Automation System) would fix any stigma? (of course it would have to be MAAS or MOCAAS (Microsoft Office Client AAS)). You get the idea.

Any other suggestions? the ruder the better.

What would be your top 2 or 3 weaknesses of VBA?

cheers

Simon

Ribbon positions

In all the ribbon discussions I have seen there seems to be 3 possible positions.

1. Overall it was a bad move - the cons out weigh the pros
2. Overall its was good, adds useful functionality without taking away anything important
3. The ‘it happened get over it’ crowd.

Obviously I am in the first group, but I completely respect those that hold the second view. I think this comes down to personal priorities. Its a fact of development that there is a broad range of customers with a broad range of requirements. Its no surprise what works for one won’t for another.

The third group though, state the obvious and add nothing to the debate. Its not a problem to not care about a discussion, there are plenty of debates going on that I don’t care about. I just don’t bother joining in where I’m not bothered.

This third group seem to have limited options themselves and are perhaps unaware of options that are available. For example I am considering the option of moving more into Excel to OpenOffice Calc conversions because I think the ribbon is boosting that market. Others have moved into the ribbon replacement UI business for example. I’m also thinking about some more web-centric stuff too.

I do think its worth discussing the ribbon and the breaking UI changes MS are introducing throughout their products. Microsoft are listening and given enough encouragement could (possibly, maybe) be persuaded to change course.

Those who are less familiar with Microsoft may see it as a single entity with a single point of view. In fact like many organisations Microsoft is made up of people, and those people often have different points of view. There are people within the Office team that think a compatibility mode would have been a good thing. Just as there are people who are convinced the ribbon is the ‘one true way’.

They are currently part way through developing Office 14, if the community kick off enough, and if the ribbon can be blamed for weak sales, who knows what delights might await us in O14? I’m not holding my breath of course, neither am I sitting back.

I don’t think MS could back down and re-introduce commandbars. But they could open the object model back up for us devs to put them back. (In a no loss of face stylee).

Of course the fact that there is already a booming market in ribbon replacement UIs for Office should be cause for some rational thinking at MSO HQ.

cheers

Simon