[Novalug] Hiring - woes

Joel Fouse joel@fouse.net
Wed Feb 21 17:00:38 EST 2007


On Wed, 2007-02-21 at 15:22 -0500, Ken Kauffman wrote:
> <snip>
> > An equally pernicious problem:  People identify the need, but misapply the
> > technology.  If I get *one more* Excel spreadsheet with no actual
> > mathematics in it, I'm going to scream.
> >
> <snip>
> 
> Didn't you get the memo that only Excel is to be used for display of
> information in a grid-like fashion? Calculators are for math.
> 
> (Tables in Word just costs too much to implement.)
> 
> Again, Excel is the only way to display text in a grid.
> 
> Sorry. I was "channeling" retarded secretaries, er, administrative
> assistants.

I'd have to pull back on this one and say I couldn't care less *shrug*.
Just as I look for efficiencies anywhere I can find them in my own work,
I don't have any problem if someone uses an application with a
grid-based display paradigm to...umm...display information in a
grid-like fashion.  It's much quicker than manually creating your own
grid everytime and figuring out how many columns you need and trying to
adjust the size and height and width and adding a column because you
forgot one and this row needs to be italics and that column needs to
have different font colors and...you know what?  Doing any of that is
generally a bit easier and quicker in ${spreadsheet_app} than in
${word_processor}.  Either way I'm launching an ${office_bundle}
application, so it really doesn't make any difference to me.

Just because an app was designed for and has a core strength in one area
doesn't mean it can't also be functionally useful in another.

- Joel





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