this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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You're entitled to your opinion but I would say Excel is one of the best, if not THE best spreadsheet application ever produced. It's one thing that Microsoft actually got mostly right and one of the only reasons I still pay for an Office 365 subscription.
If you're just creating simple spreadsheets, there's plenty of other options out there.
But, if you're a power user doing a lot of complex data analytics, Excel is still the king.
My main gripe is that I still have to use VBA for a lot of stuff behind the scenes. Yuck.
Only if you refuse to learn SQL and do everything in a fraction of the time with way more functionality.
That works when you have access to a SQL database instead of a bunch of massive CSV files.
cracks knuckles
Now you’re speaking my language!
Not saying there's any reason to switch, but I believe you can load CSV's into sqlite.
Datasette would be something that I would try for CSV's as well, that seems like an interesting piece of technology I haven't had reason to use yet.
Finally there's always Jupiter Notebook and any respectable DataFrame-solution.
Not to knock spreadsheet-solutions too much - I certainly see their value and use them frequently - but if I had to do something that warranted writing VBA, I'd probably reach for a tool I could combine with some form of VCS like Git at least.
Importing CSV into SQL is trivial and gives you far more control than Excel can.
Jupyter gang, any other data scientists here?