• (cs)

    A TDWTF article with a happy ending? There's TRWTF!

  • Pseudonym (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    A TDWTF article with a happy ending? There's TRWTF!
    Not only that, but a developer didn't get fired for "messing things up".
  • sulis (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic

    A TDWTF article without a 'frist' comment? There's TRWTF.

  • Snowman25 (unregistered) in reply to sulis
    sulis:
    A TDWTF article without a 'frist' comment? There's TRWTF.

    frist!!

  • Iggy (unregistered) in reply to sulis
    sulis:
    A TDWTF article without a 'frist' comment? There's TRWTF.

    Frist comments get conditional formatting in "white on white" without VBA

    just wondering why he did not use a loop, looping over all cells. another WTF about Excel is, that the formulars are language specific, in german e.g. it is "=SUMME(A1:A3)", where in english it is "=SUM(A1:A3)"

  • Walky_one (unregistered) in reply to Iggy
    Iggy:
    another WTF about Excel is, that the formulars are language specific, in german e.g. it is "=SUMME(A1:A3)", where in english it is "=SUM(A1:A3)"
    At least the formula is stored language independent (e.g. you can open the sheet in any language and it will work). That wasn't the case in early versions of Excel (well... actually I think it only started working in 2003).
  • foo AKA fooo (unregistered)

    Improving performance without explicit orders? What a moron!

    Filed under: Business truisms

  • Onga (unregistered)

    One of the biggest issues you find with Excel is people not knowing what built-in functionality there is. Looping through every row in a worksheet instead of using COUNTIF()/SUMIF() is a very common one.

    I'm not complaining though - keeps me in a job.

  • QJo (unregistered)

    For the non-XL-experts among us: anyone going to write how the code ought to be?

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    For the non-XL-experts among us: anyone going to write how the code ought to be?
    Sure.

    Private Sub Worksheet_Calculate() End Sub

    That will be $200, thanks.

    (I make a living from this sort of stuff too, so please keep doing it.)

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    QJo:
    For the non-XL-experts among us: anyone going to write how the code ought to be?
    Sure.

    Private Sub Worksheet_Calculate() End Sub

    That will be $200, thanks.

    (I make a living from this sort of stuff too, so please keep doing it.)

    What Jay means is that with the conditional formatting feature of Excel, there's no need for the code. I'll have my 200€ for this vital assistance, please.

  • (cs)

    TRWTF is that 95% of the article appears on the home page with only one concluding paragraph hidden.

  • Dubstep (unregistered)

    Like sand through the hourglass these are the days of our lives

  • MrBean (unregistered) in reply to Snowman25

    'frouth!!' would be more appropriate

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    What Jay means is that with the conditional formatting feature of Excel, there's no need for the code. I'll have my 200€ for this vital assistance, please.
    Hey!

    Stay off my turf, buddy!

  • Bert Glanstron (unregistered)

    Dear DASH,

    In case you can’t tell, this is a grown-up place. The fact that you insist on using modern, built-in Excel features clearly shows that you’re too young and too stupid to understand VB code-generation.

    Go away and grow up.

    Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

  • cogo (unregistered) in reply to Bert Glanstron
    Bert Glanstron:
    Go away and grow up.

    Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

    Oh wow, haven't seen that meme in a while. What's next, the return of Irish Girl? (ihopeihopeihope) :-)

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to cogo
    cogo:
    Bert Glanstron:
    Go away and grow up.

    Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

    Oh wow, haven't seen that meme in a while. What's next, the return of Irish Girl? (ihopeihopeihope) :-)

    Please show a little sensitivity. I had an Irish girl once who was too young and too stupid to merge multiple memes, and wouldn't go away and grow up, and I can aasure you it was no laughing matter.

  • cogo (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    cogo:
    Bert Glanstron:
    Go away and grow up.

    Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

    Oh wow, haven't seen that meme in a while. What's next, the return of Irish Girl? (ihopeihopeihope) :-)

    Please show a little sensitivity. I had an Irish girl once who was too young and too stupid to merge multiple memes, and wouldn't go away and grow up, and I can aasure you it was no laughing matter.

    Well maybe next time you should have Paula Bean design an embedded system on a wooden table, that might work out better for you.

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to cogo
    cogo:
    QJo:
    cogo:
    Bert Glanstron:
    Go away and grow up.

    Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

    Oh wow, haven't seen that meme in a while. What's next, the return of Irish Girl? (ihopeihopeihope) :-)

    Please show a little sensitivity. I had an Irish girl once who was too young and too stupid to merge multiple memes, and wouldn't go away and grow up, and I can aasure you it was no laughing matter.

    Well maybe next time you should have Paula Bean design an embedded system on a wooden table, that might work out better for you.

    Yes but the boolean return from the XML stored in the Enterprise layer returned FILE_NOT_FOUND.

  • (cs) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    cogo:
    QJo:
    cogo:
    Bert Glanstron:
    Go away and grow up.

    Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

    Oh wow, haven't seen that meme in a while. What's next, the return of Irish Girl? (ihopeihopeihope) :-)

    Please show a little sensitivity. I had an Irish girl once who was too young and too stupid to merge multiple memes, and wouldn't go away and grow up, and I can aasure you it was no laughing matter.

    Well maybe next time you should have Paula Bean design an embedded system on a wooden table, that might work out better for you.

    Yes but the boolean return from the XML stored in the Enterprise layer returned FILE_NOT_FOUND.

    Brillant!

  • n_slash_a (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    QJo:
    For the non-XL-experts among us: anyone going to write how the code ought to be?
    Sure.

    Private Sub Worksheet_Calculate() Dim Paula_Dean as Brilliant End Sub

    That will be $200, thanks.

    (I make a living from this sort of stuff too, so please keep doing it.)

    FTFY

  • John (unregistered)

    Reminds me of the only time I ever did any Cobol programming.

    I used a loop. Boss took one look and said "nope we don't use those, do one step at a time".

    Thankfully I was never again asked to do Cobol.

  • (cs)

    Using conditional formatting is different than the code presented. For example, if someone adds rows or columns conditional formatting will "move with" the old rows - the existing code would have formatted in the same cells.

    Depending upon the spreadsheet (and protection) this may or may not be the correct behavior.

  • F (unregistered) in reply to n_slash_a
    n_slash_a:
    Jay:
    QJo:
    For the non-XL-experts among us: anyone going to write how the code ought to be?
    Sure.

    Private Sub Worksheet_Calculate() Dim Paula_Bean as Brillant End Sub

    That will be $200, thanks.

    (I make a living from this sort of stuff too, so please keep doing it.)

    FTFY

    FTFY

  • (cs) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    For the non-XL-experts among us: anyone going to write how the code ought to be?

    Easy:
    ls excel | rm

    It's absolutely batshit crazy (as TFA hints) to use Excel for pretty much anything whose outcome you care about.

  • Mason Wheeler (unregistered) in reply to CodingForPretend
    CodingForPretend:
    QJo:
    cogo:
    QJo:
    cogo:
    Bert Glanstron:
    Go away and grow up.

    Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

    Oh wow, haven't seen that meme in a while. What's next, the return of Irish Girl? (ihopeihopeihope) :-)

    Please show a little sensitivity. I had an Irish girl once who was too young and too stupid to merge multiple memes, and wouldn't go away and grow up, and I can aasure you it was no laughing matter.

    Well maybe next time you should have Paula Bean design an embedded system on a wooden table, that might work out better for you.

    Yes but the boolean return from the XML stored in the Enterprise layer returned FILE_NOT_FOUND.

    Brillant!
    This is completely normal and not a WTF at all on an embedded device with no file system.

  • appellatio (unregistered) in reply to John
    John:
    Reminds me of the only time I ever did any Cobol programming.

    I used a loop. Boss took one look and said "nope we don't use those, do one step at a time".

    Depending how long ago it was Boss could have been right - code with commands listed one step at a time would run faster than something with a loop.

  • Hermun (unregistered)

    Why was the resume of a programmer who had left the company long ago being made available for any one to read?

  • Todd (unregistered)

    I met an Irish Girl who was also the president's daughter. Sensing a dangerous and hopeless situation, I moved to Hyderabad.

  • maertsch (unregistered)

    There is a copy&paste bug in the block handling the D44 formatting. It changes formatting of D42 if the value of D44 is greater than 10.

  • (cs) in reply to maertsch
    maertsch:
    There is a copy&paste bug in the block handling the D44 formatting. It changes formatting of D42 if the value of D44 is greater than 10.

    Same with G44.

  • (cs)

    TRWTF is relying on developers for anything done exclusively in Excel. It was created to do that messy crap so that you didn't have to involve developers.

  • David Mårtensson (unregistered) in reply to Walky_one
    Walky_one:
    Iggy:
    another WTF about Excel is, that the formulars are language specific, in german e.g. it is "=SUMME(A1:A3)", where in english it is "=SUM(A1:A3)"
    At least the formula is stored language independent (e.g. you can open the sheet in any language and it will work). That wasn't the case in early versions of Excel (well... actually I think it only started working in 2003).

    Unfortunately that is still not fool proof.

    One Excelsheet we had about 3 years ago (excel 2010) contained a column of true/false values.

    If you filled it in on an english excel it colors them correctly, but if you filled it in on a swedish machine the column still read true/false, but when you added rows you had to write Sant/Falskt, not True/False or the coloring did not work ;)

    Luckily it was only a temporary list before we had a real system online to handle the information.

  • (cs) in reply to David Mårtensson 
    =0>1

=1<0

    I'm going to go take a cold shower now.

  • (cs) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    =0>1

    =1<0

    I'm going to go take a cold shower now.

    ??? Both returned FALSE for me. (Excel 2010)

  • (cs) in reply to Pawprint
    Pawprint:
    chubertdev:
    =0>1

    =1<0

    I'm going to go take a cold shower now.

    ??? Both returned FALSE for me. (Excel 2010)

    s/=1<0/=0<1

    (transcription error)

  • Jim (unregistered) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    QJo:
    For the non-XL-experts among us: anyone going to write how the code ought to be?

    Easy:
    ls excel | rm

    It's absolutely batshit crazy (as TFA hints) to use Excel for pretty much anything whose outcome you care about.

    find / -name *[Ee][Xx][Cc][Ee][Ll]* -exec rm -f

  • AIR (unregistered) in reply to Mason Wheeler
    Mason Wheeler:
    CodingForPretend:
    QJo:
    cogo:
    QJo:
    cogo:
    Bert Glanstron:
    Go away and grow up.

    Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

    Oh wow, haven't seen that meme in a while. What's next, the return of Irish Girl? (ihopeihopeihope) :-)

    Please show a little sensitivity. I had an Irish girl once who was too young and too stupid to merge multiple memes, and wouldn't go away and grow up, and I can aasure you it was no laughing matter.

    Well maybe next time you should have Paula Bean design an embedded system on a wooden table, that might work out better for you.

    Yes but the boolean return from the XML stored in the Enterprise layer returned FILE_NOT_FOUND.

    Brillant!
    This is completely normal and not a WTF at all on an embedded device with no file system.
    Rightly or wrongly religious wars have started over less

  • ga e;orgi (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    Pawprint:
    chubertdev:
    =0>1

    =1<0

    I'm going to go take a cold shower now.

    ??? Both returned FALSE for me. (Excel 2010)

    s/=1<0/=0<1

    (transcription error)

    I don't getit.... I get: =1>0 :TRUE (1 IS greater) =1<0 :FALSE =0>1 :FALSE =0<1 :TRUE (as expected).

    Not sure I be getting your point

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Jim

    [quote user="Jim"][/quote] find / -name *[Ee][Xx][Cc][Ee][Ll]* -exec rm -f [/quote]"Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" was a great movie, and now it's gone.

    Bloody regex, that's the real WTF.

  • agbeladem (unregistered)

    Man, how great it would be if we could make regex case insensitive!

  • Chris (unregistered)

    Am I the only one who wanted to strangle someone over that first if statement?

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to Chris
    Chris:
    Am I the only one who wanted to strangle someone over that first if statement?
    No, I believe you're not the only one not to want to not strangle nobody over not the not-first if statement.
  • nmclean (unregistered) in reply to appellatio
    appellatio:
    John:
    Reminds me of the only time I ever did any Cobol programming.

    I used a loop. Boss took one look and said "nope we don't use those, do one step at a time".

    Depending how long ago it was Boss could have been right - code with commands listed one step at a time would run faster than something with a loop.

    That most certainly would not make him right.

  • Raylax (unregistered)
    before it gets big enough to have IT resources, every enterprise will run on a clutter of VBA-ridden Excel spreadsheets masquerading as line-of-business software

    Suggesting that larger organisations with IT resources don't rely on a clutter of VBA-ridden Excel spreadsheets masquerading as line-of-business software.

    That's TRWTF.

    And largely speaking, my job.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Chris
    Chris:
    Am I the only one who wanted to strangle someone over that first if statement?
    No, I'd seen pretty much all I needed to see when I saw that it was checking for intersection between two hard-coded (identical) ranges.

    Side note, Excel is fucking awesome, and the only thing it lacks is the ability to punch you in the face if you're a fucking moron who writes code like this.

    Seriously, the only time I've ever used VBA in Excel was when I needed to grab a page over HTTP with a URL containing a cell's value as a GET parameter. AFAIK you cannot do this with the built-in data features. You can grab HTTP pages (in fact, "import from text file" works just as well from a URL as it does from a file on your computer - albeit slower), but you can't use a cell as a URL parameter. You can do damn well near anything using formulas and conditional formatting. Handy, because those don't throw up the scary warning message that VBA does, if you haven't previously trusted either the workbook or the location where it's saved.

  • (cs) in reply to ga e;orgi
    ga e;orgi:
    I don't getit.... I get: =1>0 :TRUE (1 IS greater) =1<0 :FALSE =0>1 :FALSE =0<1 :TRUE (as expected).

    Not sure I be getting your point

    Now switch the language on your computer and see what the result is versus just typing in TRUE and FALSE.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    ga e;orgi:
    I don't getit.... I get: =1>0 :TRUE (1 IS greater) =1<0 :FALSE =0>1 :FALSE =0<1 :TRUE (as expected).

    Not sure I be getting your point

    Now switch the language on your computer and see what the result is versus just typing in TRUE and FALSE.

    And this is a problem because...?

  • (cs)

    So for these tests:

    (English) =0>1 =0<1 =1>0 =1<0 TRUE FALSE

    (Swedish) =0>1 =0<1 =1>0 =1<0 TRUE FALSE

    Do you get the same results?

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