Excel
In investment banking, one of the first things you are taught is excel formatting and how to write readable excel . How to write clear and concise comments, what color different cell types should be ( black for formulas, blue for inputs, green for links to other cells, red for weird formulas ), how to structure large files (when to make a new tab vs keeping a monolithic file), when to break up a formula into multiple cells so it is easier to understand, even that you need to hit "ctrl home" before you save so that the next person to open the file starts at the right place (the group that trained me called it "turning off the lights before you leave a room")
So if someone is good at excel you can easily understand what they're doing and why they did it
From < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18150833 >
You know who's awesome at Excel? Martin Shkreli. You know, the Wall Street asshole who's in jail now? A while back, someone told me "hey, dude, there are these videos on YouTube where Martin Shkreli uses Excel, and they're fucking magic. It's like the first time you watched someone who's really good at Vim. "
It's true: [0]. Say what you will about that little heartless douchebag, he's fucking awesome at using Excel.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSf5YhYQbw
If we're sharing awesome excel videos, You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky has to be among the best I've ever seen. Joel, being on the team that made excel, has an incredible amount of excel knowledge.
The video is meant to be in the same vein as the You Suck at Photoshop videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c
From < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18150833 >
In my 25+ years of using Excel, here's what makes a pro:
- Someone who knows how to use two dimensional TABLE()s and vector functions.
- Someone who can implement an imperative convergence (such as Newton/Raphson or non-plug-in goal seek)
- Someone who can audit their dependencies and not shit out dozens of unused vars
- Someone who knows the limit is 10 sheets and 20MB. :)
Visual Basic and shortcuts do not a pro make. VB makes Excel less usable , IMHO because now there is an extra dimension to debugging that requires understand each Macro and what it touches: it breaks the entire philosophy of show formulas + auditing.
Yes, this sounds like /r/iamverysmart and /r/gatekeeping, but I'll own that.
>Someone who knows the limit is 10 sheets and 20MB. :)
Hahaha. Isn’t that the truth.
It’s come to a point that there is only one true workflow for actual business excel work.
1) Back up your source data and then never touch it.
2) Clean source data, make sure you use tables.
3) As soon as possible, separate data from calculation.
All work, will probably be used more than once. So there is never really anything like “scratch work”. So when you open excel make it a point for it to be readable.
I’ve taken To ensuring calculated fields are at the end of the table. With a column header indicating that this is not native to the original data set.
Document your weird steps.
From < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18150833 >
Spreadsheets put together two aspects: - data (raw and calculated) - presentation
The original mistake is that both were made interdependent. Excel tries to fix that the hard way by introducing various reference modes, a lot of "do what I mean" magic and even nested spreadsheets/databases (aka "tables").
From < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12448545 >