19 Oct
2011
19 Oct
'11
7:20 p.m.
I read once that the creation of the spreadsheet is the basic trigger for
the loss of leadership skills at the helms of most companies.
The logic went something along the lines of ' spreadsheets allowed decisions
to be justified, not based on what was good (tm), instead of having a sound
financial basis. Resulting the the removal of decision making powers by
visionaries, into the hands of the bean counters who should have been making
sure that there was money in the bank."
So - in that context, why would an engineer ever need the tool of a back
room bean counter, who has been pushed into the executive offices??
Doug
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Dan Gahlinger <dgahling at hotmail.com> wrote:
you're kidding right?
excel is a joke. 1-2-3 was much better,
quattro was even better
sadly both have been crushed by monopoly of m$
is quattro old enough to be considered classic computing yet? :)
--
Doug Jackson
VK1ZDJ
http://www.dougswordclock.com/ -< My clocks
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Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:43:53 +0100
Subject: Re: Spreadsheets (was Microsoft flamage)
From: lproven at gmail.com
To: cctech at classiccmp.org
On 19 October 2011 23:27, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
>> > Excel - well, it's the most polished spreadsheet there's ever
been.
>> > Other did some things better, but Excel does everything you could
ever
>> > need.
>
> Read the book "Laboratory Lotus : A Complete Guide To Instrument
> Interfacing"; Louis M. Mezei, Prentice Hall, 1989
> ISBN[10]: 0-13-519885-2
>
> 'Twould be presumptuous to specify "everything you could ever need".
> Some of us have unusual needs, that you might consider bizarre.
>
> "You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you get
what
> you need"??
>
>
> On Wed, 19 Oct 2011, Tony Duell wrote:
>> Actually it doesn't do everything I could ever need which leads me to
a
>> serious qyestion :
>> Did/does any spreadsheet, on any platform, allow you to put complex
>> numbers in the cells and operate on them?
>> Yes, of course you can treat a complex numner as 2 real numbers and
>> define the appropriate operations -- any spreadsheet will do that. I
did
>> it in Visicalc. But as I use complex
numbers a lot in AC circuit
>> analysis, and I know others who do too, I am suprised no spreadsheet
>> handles them as well as my HP calculators.
>
>
> I'm far from expert - I don't even know how to get Excel to TELL ME
which
> numbers are float, which cells (particularly
floats) are calculated
> fron other floats, or even which have been rounded.
>
> I have used Visicalc, Lotus, and Excel for a number of "off-label"
uses,
> such as small flat-file databases, etc. A
lot of my CGA and MDA
monitors
had
burnt-in "Lotus L"s.
It is amazingly versatile, but certainly NOT "everything that you could
ever need"
OK, I defer. I was not aware of anything 1-2-3 could do that Excel
could not, but hey, apparently there is. I was wrong. Sorry.
--
Liam Proven ? Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
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