Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Excel's main limitations (disclaim: I haven't upgraded to 2013 yet)

- you can't easily audit a spreadsheet unless each cell only refers to cells immediately above or to the left. Otherwise it's GOTO and COMEBACK programming. "referentially opaque probabilistic graph programming"

- Control-] lets you see where a cell is referenced in other formulas, but only if the formula is on the same tab. Control-[ does take you to other tabs. Control-` shows you a wall of formulas

- there's no easy way to track significant digits and sources of floating point error, e.g. adding numbers that are orders of magnitude different.

- in the past, underflow has even been a security issue

http://www.checkpoint.com/defense/advisories/public/2011/cpa...

- you can't report bugs, or see their tracker, that I know of

http://connect.microsoft.com/ (i'll save you the time, Excel isn't on 2 lists

- you can't go to extended precision, Rationals or unlimited precision integers or floats when you need.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: