Excel Is a Bane of Humankind

Excel is used by thousands, if not millions, of people every day and in all industries. It is a useful tool for what it is. The problem as I write this, I suppose, is not so much Excel itself but rather how it is used. Users expect it to be dependable. As they should. It's developed by one of the biggest companies in the world. But it should be used for what it is intended to be, a spreadsheet. What is Excel not?

A DATABASE!!!

Just to be clear. I understand it's not feasible for most companies to write a program for every nuanced situation. But when you have an enormous, and I mean ENORMOUS, spreadsheet that does calculations, uses macros made by the last person who had the job, and is needed for an absolutely integral cog in the function of your business, Excel is not what you need. You need a specialized program to handle that amount of data reliably. I've seen so many times where a macro gets corrupted, a file is corrupted, 32-bit version of office can't handle the processes needing done, etc. (Why programs still use 32-bit architecture is beyond me, but I guess companies have a financial limit on what they can realistically keep up to date.)

I've made a few simple web applications that handle a decent amount of data. I've used SQLite and PostgreSQL depending on the situation and they both work better than an Excel spreadsheet. I can customize it the way I need it and it is reliable. Of course, a database can be corrupted. But that's why you use a backup. (And I don't mean a person that doesn't know how to code making an Access program that runs like garbage.)

Again, while I realize that a niche application is not practical in every situation. For reliable data integrity and something that anyone can sit down and use, it is going to be best to have an application that stores data in a real database rather than an Excel spreadsheet. This may be just a rant posting, but it gives me impetus to keep coding. The fact that there is bad or misused software out there than can be improved upon. I will do what I can to make the world a better place by helping to rid the world (or at least myself) of the snare that is an Excel "database"

25 Words or Less: If you care about your data, do not use Excel to store it. Use a real database!

New Beginnings (again)

 I feel like I need to start this again. I know no one would really read this but I need a way to document things I learn. I have gotten into some coding again. I started making a documentation system last year and got to a point where I could try uploading it to AWS but had to put that on pause. Been a very busy since the last post. Started a helpdesk job at a different company. Took a trip to The Netherlands. Trying to learn Hindi. Busy getting everyone working from home at my job due to Covid. I developed a board game to a point that I'm somewhat happy with it. The game will just need a few more tweaks and play testing with those changes and maybe it can go to market someday. When the pandemic comes to an end I might be able to take it to some shops for people to play.

Just last week I started on an efficiency application to track how productive I am being. And thus why I want to start back at keeping track this way. Here is a problem I was having yesterday and how I resolved it.

I have a Flask application and on the one page I want to do an AJAX request. The AJAX request seemed to work as there were no errors. However, the page would always reload when clicking submit, so maybe the AJAX request wasn't going through. Through testing I found out that since the data was in a form, the form was being submitted to the backend before the AJAX request would ever be made. I removed the form tags and just used input fields with individual ids. The AJAX request would then send the data in those two fields to the backend.

I feel there is a better way to implement this as I believe form data can be sent through an AJAX request, but that might be for another day as this setup seems like it will work for this use case.

25 words or less: Having input fields not inside form tags can potentially make AJAX requests simpler.