I see your point, but I don't really agree that spreadsheets are inherently any harder to understand or verify than any other type of programming language. It's possible to make a mess in any language, just as it is possibly to write well laid out and designed systems in most any language.
________________________________ From: JamesJ <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, January 4, 2011 8:42:25 PM Subject: Re: [The Java Posse] Re: programming theory: Quantum physics...to Java....to Scala? While there are good uses for Spreadsheets, it makes the engineer in me shudder to see them used as a serious scientific or business tool. For me, good work is verifiable work. If you have done a good job, you should be able to hand it off to a co-work and they should be able to validate your logic and design in less time than it took you to create it. This can be accomplished with a spreadsheet, but most often all I have seen is completely unverifiable 2 Dimensional spaghetti code. Basic or Fortran code with goto statements is easier to understand than most of the spreadsheet tools I have seen. It's great that you can get a quick answer, but is it the right answer and can someone do a reasonable design review of your results? I prototype on a spreadsheet, but don't do anything important without using a more transparent implementation. (Java, Matlab, Mathcad, etc.) I have also borrowed some of the strengths of spreadsheets into my apps, like auto recalculation of changed fields etc. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
