instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
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Musicians? | krepsj: I play harmonica. Not at very good level but good enough to be able to jam with my friends guitar. |
Anyone want to work through SICP together? | hydo: Count me in as well. I bought the book as a package deal from amzn with "The little Schemer" and haven't read much of it. |
Musicians? | paul7986: Piano & guitar - hobby songwriter |
Musicians? | zkarcher: Electronic music producer, here.The unofficial rule is: if you're a Flash programmer, you also create electronic music. |
Musicians? | dmpayton: I've always wanted to play the guitar, and bought an electric (LP-style) when I turned 18. Tried teaching myself to play, but life happened. Sadly, it's bow collecting dust by my bedside.When I'm not working 50 hours a week with several side projects on top of my responsibilities as a husband and father, I'd like to pick it back up. |
Musicians? | brianr: Piano, guitar, bass, clarinet, viola. Haven't played the last three much in the last few years though. |
Why is SICP generally preferred over HtDP? | Kaizyn: SICP and HtDP have different audiences. HtDP was designed for people who know nothing about computer programming, particularly students who would not be pursuing a degree in computer science. SICP was used in a first CS course. Because they both use Scheme, they're complimentary. If you are starting out trying programming for the first time, then HtDP will certainly be a better choice. When you finish it, you should proceed to read SICP, followed by Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming. |
Musicians? | axod: I mess around on the piano, which I bought this last year. Love it to death, it's great to just play when you need a break. (BTW I cannot recommend the Yamaha GT2 enough).I'm absolutely terrible at reading music, but I can play anything by ear, I wonder if that's usual for hacker types.http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=y6UPJJqwc1k |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | indigoviolet: Another option is to interview at some companies with the understanding that you'd only be available after, say, March. What are your skills? (I can try to see if people at my work are interested). |
Musicians? | asdf333: played violin since age 2.played in various national and all-state hs orchestras.stopped playing in college though and haven't played since |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | wheels: As everyone else has said, don't bank on funding.I think starting to put feelers out for consulting work is probably the best strategy. Even though we've got a bit more runway, some customers and some VCs that have approached us, I've been trying to do the same for the what if case.The upshot is if you can organize enough cash to keep yourself running through the downturn and do just enough consulting to stay afloat and start growing a revenue stream, if your company is still alive on the other side of this downturn it'll have cleared out a lot of the market and it'll put you in a pretty good position to try to raise a round if things are rosier in a year or so or if you can keep costs low to make a transition to living off of the revenue.That's been the focus of the planning that I've been doing for us at the moment: "How do we make sure that we're alive in a year, and how much revenue will we need at that point to be self-sustaining." |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | quellhorst: Rule 1. Work for people who can pay.Rule 2. See rule 1. |
Musicians? | liangzan: I play the classical guitar as a hobby(other than programming). Still learning now. Now I'm performing for free at old folk's homes during festivals. That's much more meaningful than playing it alone in my room. |
Musicians? | chops: I play Piano and Clarinet. While it's been about 8 years, I used to write orchestral and new age MIDI music for a few years (http://gumm.8k.com) |
Musicians? | mattdennewitz: my band (2-piece called coltrane motion) just played a sold-out show w/ mucca pazza (look them up right this second) at the empty bottle (chicago) last night. blown out hip-hop beats under farfisa, ms-10, and guitar noise. fun stuff. |
Computing/Biology Resources? | sarosh: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=index-html...andhttp://www.ploscompbiol.org/home.action |
Any entrepreneur/programmer here in China? | toisanji: yes, me |
Musicians? | ynd: I play the guitar. But I wouldn't call myself a musician just yet.Love music though. |
Computing/Biology Resources? | Rod: You might find this book useful and interesting:A Computer Scientist's Guide to Cell Biology
http://books.google.com/books?id=nAjhrOyBhIoC |
Musicians? | sctb: I play the guitar (electric, acoustic) and the electric bass. Before working as a programmer I taught fretted strings professionally. |
Musicians? | statictype: I play the Veena on and off.I find it's a good release valve from spending too much time in front of the screen. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | seshagiric: at 13 your brother need not worry about memory leaks :)
Just let him start with C.More importantly you should concentrate on what can be done with code(e.g. create a blog, automatically search from library of congress or wikipedia, create a graph of his favorite football team etc etc).People get hooked when they accomplish something...bothering about language or the finer nuances like memory leak etc can come later. |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | benn: Go for a long run every day, hang out with your good friends, read a book on zen buddhism and get your head straight. It only seems bad because you have a bad take on it. Once you've managed to stop panicking (which is an art in itself) - take a look at things rationally and the right course of action will make itself apparent. You're (probably) in the 10% of employeeable people, you should feel sorry for the highschool dropouts working at burgerfuel. |
Musicians? | antiform: My pet theory is that playing a musical instrument is less common a hobby among programmers now than it was a generation ago, because now programming tends to be associated with "Computer Science" as its own discipline, rather than a subdiscipline of math.Near the end of this interview [http://tex.loria.fr/historique/interviews/knuth-clb1993.html], Don Knuth says that one way CS graduate students have changed since the 70s is that they are less interested in music:"What changes have you seen in the students coming into the computer science program over the years?""Knuth: There is a very profound change that I can't account for. In the 70s, the majority of our students were very interested in music. The first thing we'd ask them when they came in was 'What instrument do you play?' We had lots of chamber groups and so on. Now almost none of the students are interested in music. I don't know if it's because a different kind of people are enrolling in computer science, or because it's true of all today's students, or what. If you ask computer science students now what their hobby is, the chances are most of them will say 'Bicycling'. I recently had one who played a harmonica, but there were almost no musicians in the group." |
Musicians? | daydream: Played bass guitar for 8 years, and also have done a ton of audio recording and engineering - recording bands live and in the studio, wore a bunch of different hats on film and video projects, and did audio for some high-profile art installations.It's not my day job, but music is my main serious hobby outside of work, and particularly with the music recording I've recorded literally in the 100's of bands over the last decade or so. |
How do you create a "limited fixed div"? | HendrikR: There's an article discussing this topic on ajaxian.com featuring another jQuery solution: http://ajaxian.com/archives/pegs-automate-display-fixed |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | kailashbadu: An ideal programming language for absolute beginners is the one that doesn’t force them to worry about underlying computing structure(e.g. memory management). Instead the language should teach the fundamental principles of programming (like control statements and the concept of subroutine) in a simple environment that is free of complexities. I would recommend either Karel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_(programming_language)) or Alice (http://www.alice.org/). |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | puzzle-out: Are you fearful of crashing and burning financially or just uncomfortable with the uncertainty of the situation? (or both)
The startup scene is certainly uncertain at the moment - then again, uncertainty is its defining experience anyhow. Learn to live with uncertainty - balance your work life with things you know you enjoy and that are always there. |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | Tichy: For an average person I would think JavaScript would be the most useful language, but for a 13 year old? It really depends on what he is interested in. For example maybe he would enjoy programming Lego robots? Or creating his own Flash games? |
Musicians? | h34t: I hadn't played a musical instrument in 10 years, but last month I picked up a keyboard and began teaching myself piano. I really enjoy it. |
Musicians? | geuis: Trombone and baritone |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | oakmac: Aside from the obvious advice to keep your expenses as low as possible, I think you might consider a change in attitude. You are playing a game with a positive expected value, but the rules of the game are such that payoffs are very large and very rare (if you've read The Black Swan, think Extremistan). Unfortunately, the game of "paying my rent check" and "eating on a daily basis" follows a different set of rules. You've been allowed the privilege of taking a risk due to your savings; once they are gone you will be playing a different game. When that time comes you may just decide that "some business guy's lame vision" is a decent alternative to being hungry on the streets coding Haskell. The choice is up to you.Also, stop feeling scared and terrified (your words). These emotions are not helping you in any way. |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | critic: You could have mentioned what your startup was. Free publicity. Also, people here might provide some input about whether the odds of getting funding really are 90-95% for your type of startup.I strongly recommend spending part of your time (one or two days a week) looking for a job to hedge your bets. |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | Tichy: Finding contract work is not so much work, especially if you are willing to code in Java. Personally I dread the day when I will have to do so again, but it is better as starving. Plus, 3 to 4 months can pay for the whole year.Just check the typical sites, I had good experiences with jobserve.co.uk (they don't only cover the UK - but I am in Europe/Germany).iPhone contracting seems to be quite popular atm, too. If you already have a Mac, might be worth looking into. Personally I still shun the investment of getting a Mac+iPod touch. |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | iuguy: There's a lot of good advice here from other posters on living frugally which is all good stuff and I highly recommend you take what people have said on board about living cheaper. I'd like to make a comment about your situation as a whole.You left your job in April, that's May through to January where you've had no salary. 8 months. You're looking at 'another 5-7 months' before funding in a recession. In effect, what you're saying is that you're looking at 12 months of unpaid work and wiping out your savings in the middle of an economic downturn in the hope that you'll find a business investor who has the cash to fund your deferred salaries, anyone elses deferred salaries (and if you're the only one then you need to change that) as well as investment moving forward.In any economic climate what you're suggesting doesn't make sense to an investor, you need to either write that entire year's salary off or drastically change what you're doing. An investor is not there to fund salaries, especially backdated ones. If you want to move forward, you need to find a revenue stream. If you can't find a revenue stream but want to stay involved then you need to find a job and cut your involvement back.The suggestion about Thailand makes a lot more sense than it first seems. Moving to somewhere that costs a lot less to live with your current 5-7months of new york money will give you a hefty safety net, you could take interesting projects on as and when and could possibly retain some involvement in the startup working from somewhere like Thailand, Morocco, Mexico or even the mid-west.I hope it works out for you, if you are determined to keep at this project full time unpaid then you need to move out of NYC sooner rather than later. I would advise that you reconsider your level of involvement as this is not a profitable or revenue generating opportunity, which is what you need right now and over the coming year. |
Musicians? | maryrosecook: I've had a solo band for a few years (http://werenotthecoolkids.com/music/index.php). I've been in several bands with friends. I play the guitar, drums and sing. Being a polymath is really important to me. |
Musicians? | nickd: I started playing banjo 8 months ago. It's pretty much been my only hobby since then. Though, I think the upstairs neighbors may have moved out as a result. I still haven't found a way to practice that's fruitful, and yet isn't way to loud for everyone else. Mutes just aren't fun. |
Online backup without forgot password functionality? | gaius: But if the backupsets themselves are encrypted?One of the neat features of RMAN in Oracle 11g is it can stream AES256 encrypted backups directly into Amazon S3 as easily as it can do tape. Online-backup is a prime-time technology now. |
Musicians? | elbicho: I play guitar, compose and do recording engineeringThis is my profile in a nice collaborative site.http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/userName-elbicho/p... |
Anyone want to work through SICP together? | tomkarlo: I'd like to be added to the mailing list ... tom /at/ karlo /dot/ org |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | mochi: Something that I haven't seen mentioned: deferred pay is a huge problem in startups. Essentially, the founders are asking you to take venture risk with your salary, but they're not compensating you for that risk (I'm assuming they're not paying you 30% interest on that deferred amount.)Letting them defer your pay actually encourages them to wait as long as possible before raising a new round of funding, because the money you're lending them is far cheaper (financially) than the money they would get from an investor. Meanwhile, the longer employees work, ringing up deferred comp, the more desperate they get to have the company succeed in raising its next round.It's a really, really bad combination.I think the rule has to be, if you're an employee, you should expect to get paid like an employee (i.e. now.) If you are taking risk like a founder, you should get equitized like one, not simply "repaid" your deferred comp. Put another way: you're basically investing that deferred comp in the business, but you're not getting paid for taking that very large risk with your money. |
Taking on Too Many Projects? | noodle: "When is a project one too many?"when you feel the other projects you do are suffering because of the latest project you just took on. you don't want, for one reason or another, one project to ruin some/all of the others. in your case, this sounds like what might be happening. |
Taking on Too Many Projects? | akronim: If you have 6 one month projects, you could either deliver all at the end of six months, or concentrate on one at a time. The total work is the same, but the average delivery is earlier. And you alleviate the risk of never actually delivering anything.Your job you probably need to keep. Can you split up the novel, the contracting etc into projects & features and tasks - deliverables - in those? Rather than spending a few hours on one, then a few hours on another, just focus on one project or feature at a time and keep going till you deliver it. |
Musicians? | tonetheman: i play guitar |
Musicians? | thomasfl: I am the lead singer in a Kiss tribute band. Everybody with low self esteem should try singing in a metal band.We don't use guitars, but have good tuba and violin players. I also play keyboard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7DgpSddLiU |
Musicians? | foulmouthboy: 14 years of piano lessons. Also clarinet and saxaphone and I'll mess around with just about everything else.When I told my piano teacher that I was going to school for engineering and got into the pre-med program (as opposed to music), she was in total shock and her immediate response was, "wait... are you smart?" |
What programming language should I teach my little brother? | vizard: Processing.org : easy to get started with graphics. I have been having fun with it recently myself. |
Taking on Too Many Projects? | curiousgeorge: As long as the new stuff displaces less important and interesting projects, don't worry about it. |
Anyone want to work through SICP together? | smydsmyd: welcome to first year! |
Musicians? | msg: I play and record myself on acoustic-electric plugged into a multi-effects pedal, plugged into the computer, and I sing.I suck at everything. |
Musicians? | artlogic: I actively play guitar and electric bass - I fool around on banjo, mandolin, and drums. I'm also currently learning to play cello. I find that playing/writing music often times gets me through a tough coding problem more quickly than thinking about it directly. I'm also likely one of those people who Knuth mentioned as I have pretty serious interests in the mathematics behind computation. |
Musicians? | nx: I play the piano, as a hobby. One or two hours a day. I go to classes and I've been playing for five or six years.
I have also composed some electronic music and remixed popular tracks but I stopped doing that because of lack of time. |
Musicians? | MoeDrippins: I'm not sure I'm considered a musician, yet, but I'm learning bass guitar. I practice daily, though not as much as I'd like. |
Musicians? | ntoll: Regarding music and hacking. Personally, music theory and the compositional techniques I learned as a student "feel" very similar to hacking: writing an examination fugue in the style of J.S.Bach involves complex thinking and problem solving within a (semi) formal system with an additional (and essential) appreciation of conciseness, grace, style and aesthetic.Also, hacking music is fun! When I was learning to program I wrote a little app to solve species counterpoint problems with a genetic algorithm. Although not always up to "human" results (especially fifth species counterpoint) the "solutions" were always fun to listen to. ;-)As for me: I'm a tuba player - a graduate of the Royal College of Music with an academic (rather than performance based) undergraduate music degree. I also play organ and piano. I still play regularly and was recently a soloist with a local orchestra in a performance of the Vaughan William's concerto. Life without music would be unbearable... :-/ |
Musicians? | NoBSWebDesign: I'm the lead guitar for Ann Arbor-based rock band, Moment of Inertia (we all happen to be engineers... computer, electrical, mechanical, and aerospace between the 4 of us).http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8umukDN_PVEWe've been a band for 5 years now, and this is definitely my top activity right after running our startup and right before autocrossing (oh, and my girlfriend fits somewhere in there too). |
Musicians? | pkeane: Fingerstyle guitar. http://peterkeane.com |
Why is SICP generally preferred over HtDP? | cenazoic: Appreciate the feedback, guys. In particular, the progression of HtDP->SICP->CTM by Kaizyn is helpful; I'd been wondering how these 'big 3' stacked up in terms of difficulty.Edited for future reference:HtDP: How to Design Programs at http://www.htdp.org
SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp
CTM: Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming at http://www.x-crew.com/crew/apollo/ProgrammingText.pdf |
Musicians? | tricky: Guitar. taught lessons to get thru h.s. and college (Best job ever for a punk kid who happens to be punctual.) Went on the road for a few years with a band (Best job ever for a beginning hacker (lots of time in the van with a laptop.)) After that I got a "real programming job" and built copies of vintage gear as a hobby. Now i'm in a working cover band and in a few experimental things. |
Musicians? | baddox: Took piano lessons until 8th grade, in 9th grade picked up guitar on my own, learned to play by ear, I'm pretty decent albeit a casual player. I don't play in bands much, just jam around with friends, and I know I don't have the chops to be a professional. Music is a great thing to geek out with, you can really be a music gearhead just like with computer equipment. I'm especially interested in digital audio workstation (DAW) technology, it's a perfect blend of computer science and music. |
Musicians? | Flemlord: Piano. Classically trained, but after I dropped out of college (for unrelated reasons), I spent a couple years playing in cover bands, church organ, piano bars. Sadly, after getting into computers, I haven't touched it for 15 years. |
Musicians? | dag: I play in the church band every other week, that week involves 3 hours of practice and a 5/6 song set. I highly recommend this as this setting includes other people who require you to participate, and encourage you to play well.Almost everyone in our band has a bachelor's degree, some have grad school, and there are a couple PhDs and an MBA. Some of the musicians are amazing. |
SlinkSet or Pligg? | brett: The biggest difference is that Slinkset is hosted whereas you have to host Pligg yourself, so Slinkset is going to be a lot easier to get up and running quickly. With Pligg you'll have full control over the source code, but we're pretty proud of how much control you get at Slinkset through an easy to use web interface. With this in mind it makes a lot of sense to at least try Slinkset first.If you choose Slinkset and have any issues or ideas, we'd love to help out. Please feel free to email me: brett at slinkset. |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | mynameishere: I do believe there are minimum wage laws designed to protect foolish people from such situations. |
streaming shoutcast stations in flash (as3) | allenbrunson: i wrote a flash/actionscript client for streaming mp3 files myself. i'm about 90 percent sure that there is no getting around the fact that every server you connect to must give you explicit permission to connect, either through an .xml file or a little server running on a specific port.this limitation exists no matter whose code you use. it's a security thing that macromedia/adobe put in there on purpose. |
SlinkSet or Pligg? | dell9000: I spent the morning setting up both:
Slinkset: http://news.ryanspoon.com
Pligg: http://www.rankible.comThere are benefits to both - namely, Pligg is more robust... but I actually quite like the layout of Slinkset better.A couple questions about slinkset though for Brett -1. Can I remove / edit feeds?
2. I really want to be able to add AdSense and would gladly rotate in a % for you...
3. I want better customization of the header / footerThoughts? |
Musicians? | drewcrawford: I've played keyboards for about 11 years. This summer, I was in a Dream Theater cover band.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfmhWH7BVA4 |
Anyone want to work through SICP together? | steveeq1: Might I make a recommendation? Start with "The Little Schemer" and then graduate to "The Seasoned Schemer". Here: http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/02...It takes you more step-by-step than SICP and once you get more practice with those books, SICP will be much more paletable. |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | alnayyir: You're an idiot for not staying and saving more money without being certain you had other work available. Sorry, just saying. I have one month of living expenses left involuntarily. Twit. |
What can't you do in Excel? | rms: Queries.Excel isn't a database but a lot of people use it like one anyways. |
What can't you do in Excel? | aneesh: Excel is actually a reasonably complete program. That said, I would like to be able to:1. Build predictive models from data I've entered in Excel. I find myself exporting from Excel into R a lot to satisfy this need. Microsoft partially addresses this need with the Data Mining Add-ons for Excel.2. Have more than ~1 million rows (which is Excel 2007's limit).3. More easily clean up data in a large spreadsheet.4. Reversibly anonymize data -- if I download some logs with usernames or IPs, I don't want those in my analysis (I just hide those columns), but I do need to have a unique identifier for each row. And later get the names back if I want.And a couple things I think Excel is great at already:1. Making data look pretty. The charts are great, and there's (http://www.officelabs.com/projects/chartadvisor/Pages/defaul...) for non-power users.2. Making data easily portable.3. Filtering/sorting data -- VLOOKUP has saved the day so many times. |
Musicians? | runningskull: I play the banjo, and can't seem to stop playing the banjo. It's like a drug. |
What can't you do in Excel? | prakash: Is it aimed at any particular domain? Finance folks pretty much live in excel, they might make a good use-case on what can't be done or what they don't like in excel.Slides 4 & 5 give some insight: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2191289/yaron-minskycufp-2006While I am not a big user of excel, the google docs version of excel is very similar to the desktop version + collaboration (think Oddpost). The other approach taken by some people I have spoken with is viewing it more as data and tying to do more (think gmail to some extent). |
What can't you do in Excel? | andr: 65,000.(that's the maximum number of rows in Excel before 2007). I'd like something similar to SPSS, which is more convenient for tables with lots of rows and separates the data from the formulae.A tool for working with streaming data.Also, charting that works for large amounts data. Try having Excel chart 65,000 rows and you'll have time to make coffee while you wait. There are no ways to zoom or analyze Excel charts, either.In fact, charting for data analysis alone is a big enough problem that needs solving (and you won't have to do all that catching up with Excel). Short of using HTML/Flash or .NET/Java components, there is nothing an enterprise worker can use. Get access to a Bloomberg terminal from somewhere and play with its charts to see what I mean. |
What can't you do in Excel? | pingswept: This minor, but:A round() function that isn't stupid, i.e. it rounds to a certain number of significant figures, rather than relative to the decimal point. Workarounds exist, but I want a no-work-around.I suppose it's not a problem worthy of very smart programmers, but it still makes me wish for bullets-over-SMTP. |
What can't you do in Excel? | compay: Export to quote-qualified CSV. |
What can't you do in Excel? | zain: Automatic versioning and version control. |
What can't you do in Excel? | nx: Excel is Turing-complete :P |
What can't you do in Excel? | bd: Are they aware of Resolver One? It's spreadsheet-Python mashup.http://www.resolversystems.comSometimes I miss similar type of scripting. With Excel, I often finish copy-and-pasting raw data into Python string, upon which I then do something procedural. |
What can't you do in Excel? | asimjalis: Here are some features that would be nice in Excel: 1. Programmability in something other than VBA (Python?).
2. Online spreadsheets like Google.
3. Better search and replace.
4. Ability to reference tables through URLs so they could show up in blogs and in HTML.
Something like this: http://ycspreadsheets.com/joe/doc1.ss?s=1&block=a1:c10. This
should produce HTML that some javascript can replace in my blog with the table pulled
out of the spreadsheet.
5. Ability to pull and reference data dynamically from online sources. For example,
imagine a spreadsheet cell that pulled the current stock price of GOOG every time it
was viewed. And the rest of the spreadsheet would naturally update automatically. |
What can't you do in Excel? | ph0rque: ability to recurse. |
What can't you do in Excel? | ph0rque: 3d plotting. |
What can't you do in Excel? | boucher: I think something that google has begun to do, and that is incredibly valuable, is data "sources" that aren't hard coded into any particular spreadsheet, but that come from a URL or API of some kind.I should be able to make a row of "oil prices by month since 2005" that updates on its own. Or a cell with "current value of the DOW". |
What can't you do in Excel? | RK: Decent looking plots.If I'm going to make a scatter plot style plot for anything besides an internal memo (even an internal presentation) I always plot with something else. |
What can't you do in Excel? | ctingom: Look at ASAP Utilities. |
Any "semantic web" programmers here? What is the future of the Semantic Web? | russell: I am a crank WRT the semantic web. Sure, there will be pockets of success, but I think the whole concept is very 19th century. It is almost the opposite of the network effect; it is not of much use unless a significant portion of the sites on the web are marked up. Its whole search mechanism is logic based, while much out there in non-logical. There is all that W3C navel gazing to learn. Just about anything designed by a committee, in anticipation of a revolution, fails.I think the semantic web will fail because more revolutionary technologies will pop up out of nowhere and surprise us all. |
What can't you do in Excel? | LogicHoleFlaw: I'm exactly the opposite of your target audience with this question, but hopefully I can give a useful response anyway :)I know almost nothing about Excel and it's a deficiency I feel quite keenly. The program is almost completely undiscoverable to me and I don't even know where to start with it. I know that there are powerful uses and features of Excel but the model (or at least the bits of it I've been exposed to) hasn't clicked for me yet.I suspect I'm not alone in my bafflement; maybe there is the possibility this new spreadsheet could be useful to us Excel-ignorant customers who nonetheless want access to the benefits of this class of software.As a hacker and programmer who is comfortable with all sorts of paradigms I feel really strange admitting this weakness but I suspect that I'm not the only one who is in this boat. |
What can't you do in Excel? | rokhayakebe: Support videos/images. Edit: as well as audio/video comments. |
What can't you do in Excel? | vzn: I would like to have mind mapping (like http://www.mindjet.com/) right inside excel (as well as for other office applications) but it should be tightly integrated. It seems to me such type functionality might be useful for data crunching and modeling with full brain thinking. Spreadsheets enable only logical half of brain so there is room for improvement. |
What can't you do in Excel? | CatDancer: Oh my goodness, you're going to get my spreadsheet rant. This is what frustrates me every single time I use Excel (or the Google Docs spreadsheet, for that matter).I may not be answering your question since I'm talking about usability instead of more powerful features, but I can't but imagine that there'd be a market for simple and easy to use, even if it turns out it's not going to be addressed by your particular startup...I have a table, some data that I've laid out in rows and columns. Something simple. How much money I've been paid on my invoices to clients, for example, one invoice per row.Then I want to sum the column, to get how much I've been paid in total. (Yes, I'm talking about a very simple spreadsheet. But that's my point, that something so simple is still messed up!) So I type in a formula: =sum(C2:C10)Now I add a row, to put in another entry. Does my sum change, to include the new row? (C2:C11) No, it does not.So I do not want to be saying sum(C2:C10). I want to say, here is my simple table, and give me the sum of this column. Which, I don't know what the language would look like, but if I named my table "invoices" maybe it would be sum(invoices.C) or sum(invoices.amount) or something.Every time someone comes out with a new spreadsheet (Excel, OpenOffice, Google Docs...) I look to see if it is easier to use. Nope! Everyone is too busy being compatible with the last guy. |
What can't you do in Excel? | smanek: An 'inner join' would be nice.A few years ago I worked at a large financial consulting firm, and I was amazed at how often accountants would implement what basically amounted to an 'inner join' using nested iteration over columns in vba.This was a few versions of Excel ago, so I don't know if this feature is available in recent versions or not. I imagine not, since then Excel would really start to encroach on Access's domain. |
What can't you do in Excel? | lallysingh: One thing nice about Numbers is that you don't worry about cells as an absolute coordinate system. Each table's unique, and you can add/remove rows without hitting everything else.So, in a word, encapsulation.Also, the line between databases & spreadsheets is fairly thin, how about some relational calculus? Some import/export with SQL? Or a query language? |
What can't you do in Excel? | anamax: Instead of "new, more powerful spreadsheet", how about providing spreadsheet interface for a relational database?Of course, if you want it to be successful, you need to be able to import Excel spreadsheets as is, including macros and formula, and you also may need to maintain the linking to/from other microsoft artifacts. |
What can't you do in Excel? | IanYorston: Worth a quick look at ThinkDigits for iPhone.http://ignitedsoftware.com/products/thinkdigits/ |
What can't you do in Excel? | unalone: I'm not a big spreadsheet person, but I'd throw in aesthetics to the mix. I love Numbers when I have to use it, much more than I like Excel. Even though it's weaker, the looks more than make up for it. |
5-7 months of living expenses left; terrified. Advice? | rguzman: Do you have any startup ideas? You could try starting your own thing via NYC Seed. |
What can't you do in Excel? | jlouis: Perhaps, one could gather up some good ideas from Ken Tiltons 'cells' system for Common Lisp? |
What can't you do in Excel? | rstonge: SQL queries would be really good. I have been in many situations where I would like to do a simple query on a large spreadsheet and can't so I have to resort to programming. Most of the time it is not worth the effort, so I don't bother. This feature would be a big help. |
What can't you do in Excel? | mlinsey: Excel doesn't work well on very large spreadsheets (I use it on some sheets with over 150,000 rows.) Things are slow to load, and commands like lookups are extremely slow, enough that I think they're doing O(n) lookups for things like the VLOOKUP command, even when looking up data on tables or sorted columns.What makes the above even worse is that Excel has a pretty poor understanding of when a change necessitates a re-calculation of all values in the workbook, so I grind to a halt when making random unrelated changes (and even if I switch it to manual calculations, it re-calculates upon saving, meaning saving my work can become a 30-40 minute endeavor).Pivot tables are pretty clunky an unintuitive for most users, even though I think lots of people would use them if they understood what they were.VBA is a very verbose and inelegant language, and there are lots of operations which are called in totally different ways than the analagous forumulas in the spreadsheet. There are even some things you can do in spreadsheets which don't have an analagous VBA command, which leads to the fantastic work-around of using cells on your worksheet instead of variables and changing their text values to the command you really want to just run in VBA.The standard fill down operation sometimes doesn't Just Work(TM). Example: say you want to make a cell "=C2E5". You try filling down and you get "=C3E6", when you wanted "=C3E5", because E5 is a constant. OK, fair enough, you say, you can't reasonably expect the machine to infer what you meant. But now you adjust the cell below to what you want, and now you select two cells, one that's "=C2E5", one right below it that is now "=C3E5", and now with both selected, you fill down again. Presto, the next cells are "=C4E7","=C5E7","=C6E9","=C7E9","=C8E11".... etc. That's pretty bad.Some of these are pretty mundane, but they would all be big deals for me. |
What can't you do in Excel? | bootload: "... In the long term, it is unlikely that any particular ASP will survive without you needing to migrate your data to something else. ... The issue you bring up, of how do you deal with the fact that it is unlikely most ASPs will be around to maintain your data, is a good one. It should be discussed and careful attention should be paid to it. Your suggestion to go with ones that have the most partners and customers (VisiCalc's situation in its day) doesn't fit with your comparison to staying away from VisiCalc. ..."From the man (Dan Bricklin) himself ~ http://www.bricklin.com/nextvisicalc.htm |
How to avoid being "taken lightly" at work? | ambition: It sounds like you're looking for a primer on career management in a large company. I recommend Jack Welch's book Winning. Available in the business section of most public libraries, and cheap on Amazon. |
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