The Devil's guide to spreadsheet creation

By Jocelyn Ireson-Paine on June 18, 2010 4:37 AM | No Comments | 1 TrackBack

Patrick O'Beirne of Systems Modelling Ltd sent me a list of articles about how not to use Excel. The first that I'll mention is his own The Devil's guide to spreadsheet creation, twenty rules for writing bad spreadsheets. Some will resonate with every programmer:

Don't obtain test data; whatever the spreadsheet result is, is right.
and
Documentation is for wimps; specifications are for the timid.
And, of course:
Just do it. Jump in and do it. The users will have to accept whatever you produce anyway.

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How NOT to Write Formulae from How NOT to Use Excel on June 18, 2010 3:40 PM

Back to the links Patrick sent me. In Five Excel Formulas to make you cringe, Plum Solutions list five practices that they regard as bad. These are: explicit addition or addition and division instead of SUM and AVERAGE, too-long... Read More

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This page contains a single entry by Jocelyn Ireson-Paine published on June 18, 2010 4:37 AM.

How Not to Use Excel was the previous entry in this blog.

10 worst Microsoft Excel practices is the next entry in this blog.

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