alt Hacker NewsAre we gonna accept being forever locked in to Microsoft because of custom Excel workbook formulas? Forever paying Microsoft a license fee, because we don't want to covert said formulas or invest in open source software to make it reach parity with Excel.
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mmooss • last Monday at 7:23 AM
In many organizations, that license costs less than converting all the Excel workbooks - a process that disrupts work, as only the Excel spreadsheet's creator and user can reliably spec and test the new spreadsheet. And they need to convert with accuracy - worse than crashes is undetected bad output.
Being stuck in legacy systems sucks, and technical people like to deny the reality of it - but it's a business reality.
The problem with this is that the decisionmakers fucked up 10-20 years ago, and now when those decisions are being righted, some poor public servant is paying the price.