
Damn Excel – How the 'most important application' is ruining the world - akkartik
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/17/rogoff-reinhart-excel-errors
======
obviouslygreen
It's easy to call Excel the cause, but it's not, any more than the existence
of memory management is the cause of memory leaks.

Putting a very powerful (if archaic) tool in the hands of people without the
experience or understanding to use it effectively and then passing around the
results for editing by other people with similarly (or differently) deficient
ability with the program is the problem.

The tool is simply too flexible to be used for many of the things it's doing
by many of the people who are using it. This is one of the _good_ reasons that
we (application developers) do our best to gather requirements: Excel is
usually good at what it does, but it does so many things that understanding
what it does that you _don't_ need it to do, or how and why it does things
you've accidentally done or need to watch out for, has become as -- if not
more -- important as/than understanding what it was you wanted to do in the
first place.

So yes... Excel plays a role in some very bad things. But no, it's not Excel's
fault.

~~~
fafner
Excel is part of the cause. It simply mangles and hides programming. So it
creates just the atmosphere were people think they can "avoid" programming and
use Excel. Not realising that they are programming but in a very bad way.

So don't try to hide and dumb down the programming part. This of course
doesn't mean that mistakes wouldn't happen with better tools.

<http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~bdm25/excel2007.pdf>

~~~
mistermann
> It simply mangles and hides programming. So it creates just the atmosphere
> were people think they can "avoid" programming and use Excel.

This attitude bothers me somewhat. I'll certainly agree that the combination
of Excel's power and ease of use allowing people to model really quite complex
calculations and scenarios quickly and easily, and the ease of which they can
do it leads to a inappropriate level of "respect" for the gravity of what they
are calculating, insufficient testing, double checks, etc, leading to some
massive blunders.

But many people seem to go beyond this, asserting that one _cannot_ do such
things properly in Excel. I've actually heard one person with an absolutely
straight face say that Excel should literally be taken away from engineers and
finance folks, and any calculations they need to do should be custom
implemented by "professional" developers who will do it "properly".

Thoughts?

~~~
memracom
People who make that suggestion don`t know that there are tools like
ResolverONE. It is a spreadsheet that your finance people can use as usual.
But when it comes time to validate assumptions and check the calculations, a
professional developer can take the generated Python code, write unit tests
and other kind of tests to make sure that it does what is intended. Creating
spreadsheets could become a collaboration between professionals in finance and
professionals in software development. The tools exist to allow this, but
where is the will?

------
pesenti
The problem with Reinhardt-Rogoff has nothing to do with Excel. It was a
programing error that could have happened anywhere. The problem is that it
took them years to reluctantly share their spreadsheet. Open data research and
computation is the solution to that problem.

~~~
wyday
Exactly. A bad workman always blames his tools.

~~~
klodolph
Partly because a bad workman chooses poor tools to begin with. Tools do
matter. It's easier to find a mistake in say, an SQL query or some R code than
it is to find a mistake in an Excel spreadsheet, where you are trying to catch
the difference between SUM(A3:A12) and SUM(A3:A10) in a thousand different
cells.

~~~
niggler
> where you are trying to catch the difference between SUM(A3:A12) and
> SUM(A3:A10) in a thousand different cells.

Excel does a pretty good job in highlighting which cells are selected when you
edit a formula, and it does a pretty good job of maintaining the meaning of
the formula under sheet transformations. For example, if you inserted a row
between rows 8 and 9 then the two formulae would be =SUM(A3:A13) and
=SUM(A3:A11) respectively.

This may have been a genuine error, but the two researchers definitely started
the process with a goal in mind, and when the results agreed with their goals
they didn't bother to check.

~~~
klodolph
Yes, it does highlight the cells. But if a mistake does somehow make it in, it
is still exceptionally tedious to find the error. It is easy enough to expand
a formula for additional cells but accidentally miss a cell, leaving it with
the old formula. If you were using SQL, R, or Python, this class of error
would never happen.

~~~
flatfilefan
I guess it is just that to do a proper audit you need to have your logic on
one page. Otherwise it is extreemly hard to follow the code. In excel every
formula is sitting essentially on it's own page. It is easy to code this way
but hard to audit.

------
tptacek
Once again: this business with Excel mistakes seems like a red herring. The
bigger problem is that the Reinhart-Rogoff result never made much sense to
begin with. Correlation isn't causation; in fact, there's a strong intuitive
case that it's the reverse with debt and growth.

~~~
crusso
Both situations are intuitive. High debt causes high servicing of debt causes
inefficient use of private market resources paid in taxes.

Additionally, slow growth causes lower govt revenue causes less incurring of
debt to make up the shortfall in tax base.

Debt and growth are both inputs and outputs that are codependent. The degree
to which they impact the overall financial picture depends HEAVILY upon the
opportunity cost of the servicing of the incurred debt.

For bonus, consider what will happen to heavily indebted countries when
interest rates begin to rise. Servicing of debt will become more difficult
leading to a decrease in our ability to grow the economy, leading to more
difficulty in servicing the debt, and on and on.

~~~
inthewoods
While both are possible, this article performs an interesting analysis to show
why the paper likely had the causation wrong:

[http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/guest-post-
reinhartrogo...](http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/guest-post-
reinhartrogoff-and-growth-time-debt)

~~~
danielweber
The original paper doesn't make any claims about causation at all, does it? I
haven't read every single word, but the Abstract certainly doesn't say that.
The closest the paper says is that high debt and low growth are "associated."

------
crazygringo
Obviously, Excel isn't exactly at fault -- it's the people using it, as echoed
by many comments here.

HOWEVER, spreadsheets are rather unique in the fact that they _hide_ the very
formulas used to generate everything, unless you have a specific cell
selected.

So, opposite of computer programs, they're almost impossible to "read through"
and verify that everything makes sense. If 99 cells have identical formulas,
and 1 in the middle has a slight typo, how on earth are you ever going to see
that?

I wonder if there are other similar spreadsheet-like tools that one might use,
that make a point of _showing_ everything going on in the spreadsheet, rather
than trying to hide it?

~~~
adventured
The software should have pattern hints.

If you've got 99 cells with identical formulas, and one without, it's not far
fetched for Excel to speculate that there may be a mistake (particularly if
they're within X% of being identical). At which point it can provide a simple,
non-intrusive hint.

And going further up the wishful thinking tree, into more difficult territory,
Excel should be able to grasp what you're attempting to do by understanding,
say, the top 10,000 (arbitrary number) tasks commonly performed by people
using spreadsheets. That 'understanding' could then tip Excel toward deciding
whether there's a problem, and whether it should leave you a nice little
illuminated icon at the top right of the program with an exclamation mark.

Microsoft should have insane amounts of data on everything people do with
spreadsheets, and they should be able to make it radically more intelligent
(without being obnoxious or intrusive - it should be optional and highly
passive).

~~~
streptomycin
_If you've got 99 cells with identical formulas, and one without, it's not far
fetched for Excel to speculate that there may be a mistake (particularly if
they're within X% of being identical). At which point it can provide a simple,
non-intrusive hint._

It already does this, actually. Enter some data in two columns, like:

    
    
        4	1
        2	3
        5	6
        3	2
        4	2
        2	1
    

Then enter a sum formula in the next column like =SUM(A1:B1) and drag it all
the way down. Change one in the middle to something else, like =SUM(B3:B3)
instead of =SUM(A3:B3) and a little green arrow appears in the corner. Hover
above it an it explains there is an "inconsistent formula".

~~~
james1071
Spot that triangle among the million cells in a 1000 by 1000 table.

~~~
jodrellblank
Click the "take me to possible formula errors" button.

[http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/7e39ca/error-
check-f...](http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/7e39ca/error-check-
function-in/Images/Error-Checking-Excel2013.jpg)

------
Spooky23
I got screwed again by my damn notepad. I needed a quart of buttermilk for a
recipe, but wrote a pint instead on the memo pad.

If only I had used a recipe management package that would have automatically
told me that I wouldn't have enough buttermilk to make waffles for 5 kids.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It would actually be pretty nice if this:

    
    
        26.5 meters + 56.3 dollars
    

failed to compile.

In Scala one can certainly build this. You could certainly do it in Haskell,
though it wouldn't be as nice syntactically.

~~~
tikhonj
There are a couple of packages in Haskell that let you do this, including
unittyped[1]. It lets you write code like:

    
    
        *Main> 2 meter + (1 meter / second) * 5 second
        7.0 m
    

A really cute feature is that prefixes like centi and deci are functions:

    
    
        *Main> gallon `as` (cubic (deci meter))
        4.546089999999999 dm⋅dm⋅dm⋅#
    

It gives you an error if the dimensions don't match, but unfortunately the
error messages are _hideous_.

Anybody can define new units just by giving a conversion factor and a string
to display. These new units immediately work with other units. You can
probably define new "dimensions" as well, but that's bound to be more
involved.

All the units are represented as empty types, so it should have no overhead at
runtime.

So it _is_ very nice syntactically, with the only real problem being the error
messages and the fact that it uses a whole bunch of extensions and only
supports _very_ new versions of GHC. I think it's pretty cool.

~~~
cynwoody
According to Google, 1 gallon is 3.78541178 cubic decimeters[1].

[1] <https://www.google.com/search?q=1+gallon+in+cubic+decimeters>

~~~
tikhonj
It's an _imperial_ gallon[1].

As to _why_ it's an imperial gallon, or what an imperial gallon really is, or
who uses it--don't ask me. I'm a very metric sort of person :P.

[1]:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=imperial+gallon+in+cubic+dec...](https://www.google.com/search?q=imperial+gallon+in+cubic+decimeter)

------
roblev
Excel is an incredibly powerful environment to code. I learned it many years
ago; I started thinking it was some arcane tool that accountants used and
ended being able to deliver amazingly powerful tools to users orders of
magnitude faster than systems developers. Yes they had bugs, but... so did the
industrial systems!

Excel's real limitations came around scalability of developers (beyond one
developer you are in a bad place) and performance that can drop of a cliff
beyond a certain size. But it is an astonishingly powerful tool.

------
brudgers
Let us all stop pretending that people were pursuing austerity because of some
paper by Reinhart and Rogoff. Cutting government services to citizens for the
sake of repaying foreign debt has been going on as long as there has been
foreign debt. And that is longer than three years.

Reinhart and Rogoff were important because their idea supported an existing
financial theory. If their paper had reached an opposite conclusion, there
still would have been austerity.

Now that their paper has been shown to be in error, there will still be
austerity. And that will be because the people who benefit from it have the
power to impose it. Where they don't have the power, it will not be imposed.

------
CatMtKing
In bioinformatics work, Excel auto-formatting can screw up genomic data
[http://nsaunders.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/gene-name-
errors-a...](http://nsaunders.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/gene-name-errors-and-
excel-lessons-not-learned/) . The problem with it is that formatting will
modify entered text by default, and the user has to be actively aware of this
behavior to undo it. Regardless, spreadsheets are invaluable for visualizing
and processing tabular data -- but default behavior and user-end awareness are
the lessons here.

------
mrmagooey
When I started my thesis there was a graph passed around essentially outlining
the difference between Latex and traditional word processing, and it
essentially looked like <http://bit.ly/ZAtwNi>, with word processing packages
starting off easier but exponentially getting more difficult to use and Latex
being harder to start with, but easier in the long run.

I feel like the same thing applies to Excel. Essentially what gets built with
Excel are small programs where all the variables are unnamed, everything
passed around is a numerical value and there's almost no capacity to see the
entire 'program'.

These always get built because Excel is easier to start with (and you can
always pass an Excel spreadsheet around and let other people 'run' it), but it
means in the long run with the bigger programs you hit exponential complexity
pretty quickly and by then you're invested in Excel, even though R or Pandas
would have been more appropriate for the size of the program. Just my two
cents (coming from businesses that LOVE excel for completely insane purposes).

------
justin66
From a recent Nassim Taleb facebook posting: "Rejecting a macroeconomic idea
(Rogoff and Reinhard) over an excel error is exactly like falsifying astrology
over a computer glitch."

------
ddfu
Yeah, whatever. The only thing worse than Excel is the typical corporate-
developed big Java application produced by a bloated team of mediocre
programmers grown to further some middle manager's empire-building desire
rather than to produce quality software. I'm not surprised that people doing
organizationally key work give up on interfacing with little wannabe-CIOs
counting subordinates and just get the work done with a spreadsheet.

Not to mention Excel often ends up having better performance than most home-
grown solutions, especially now its core functions are properly multithreaded.

~~~
mbreese
Well, one thing the big Java apps have going for them is that they _might_
have unit tests :)

~~~
yuhong
And more importantly it is an actual programming language unlike spreadsheet
formulas.

------
memracom
The problem is people being satisfied with a free application for doing
mission critical calculations. Yes, you buy an MS Office licence and Excel
comes free. That is fine for run of the mill everyday calculations, but it is
not OK for mission critical work and it is NOT ok for the CFO or anyone who
advises the CFO on his decisions. Those important financial people should use
a spreadsheet like this <http://www.resolversystems.com/products/resolver-
one/> backed up by a team of software developers who write unit tests for the
spreadsheets and validate the calculations.

TLDR is that the ResolverONE spreadsheet writes Python code as you manipulate
the spreadsheet. A software developer can then organize that Python code,
write unit tests for the code and validate that the calculations do what the
CFO intended. Once this extra work is done, then the business can have
confidence in the results of the calculations. But the user interface, i.e.
the spreadsheet that end users see, is the same as it was originally.

This allows mission critical software development discipline to be applied to
the development of spreadsheets. I suspect that the existence of a tool like
ResolverONE is one of the factors that led the SEC in the USA to require
Python source code for new derivatives that are created, so that there is a
standard way to express the calculations of the derivative.

------
crusso
I'm always amazed at people for whom Excel is the hammer with which they bang
on all problems.

Bug tracking with Jira, Bugzilla, Mantis, or Trac? Heck no, Excel is the tool
for the job!

~~~
klodolph
I'd say Excel is superior to those systems for any one-person project.
Especially monsters like Bugzilla, which shine for huge projects but impose a
lot of overhead on tiny projects.

~~~
crusso
_Especially monsters like Bugzilla_

I just choked on my soda. Bugzilla packages install in a command line and you
can be up and running with a product, a couple of components for
categorization, and user accounts 15 minutes later.

The only time I don't take that 15 minutes is if I'm working on a project
where I'll NEVER be working directly with anyone else. Even then, it's often
nice "just in case" someone else comes along later and wants to collaborate,
you need to keep up with issues fixed in various releases, etc.

~~~
klodolph
Please update the instructions if they are wrong then:
<http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/4.4/en/html/installation.html>

In particular, any piece of software that needs an MTA in order to run is not
going to be pleasant when you are running a one-person project. What, are you
going to want to receive email updates from yourself whenever you update a bug
that you created on the computer you are using right now?

I wasn't even talking about installation, however. Go to the Landfill if you
don't believe me (<http://landfill.bugzilla.org/>). You want to create a new
bug? You first have to create a product, then you have to create components.
You have to fill out the entire form when filing a bug, even if you only have
one product, one component, and only target one operating system.

Then look at a bug report. Log in to Landfill and look at a bug. Here's one:
[https://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-4.4-branch/show_bug.c...](https://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-4.4-branch/show_bug.cgi?id=3058)

Then think about the cost of running Bugzilla. You are now running a web
server. What if you don't have a server? What if you just have a laptop for
the road and a desktop at home? How are you going to do database backups?

Tell me: does this beat an Excel spreadsheet for a one-person project?

Edit: I'm not saying Bugzilla is bad software. I'm saying it's like a stick
shift. If you put an automatic transmission in a car, you alienate users who
prefer manual. If you put a manual transmission in a car, you alienate users
who don't know how to use it.

~~~
crusso
_any piece of software that needs an MTA in order to run_

What distro doesn't already have an MTA installed?

Create product: Click the "new product" link then type in "My New Software
Project" enter.

Create components: Under your new product, click the "new component" linke
then type in "Miscellaneous", press enter. There, you have your product and a
catch-all component for all your new issues. Divide into more meaningful
components as time goes on.

 _What if you don't have a server?_

Now I see the misunderstanding here. I was referring to professional software
projects where I've had to work with other people, some of whom here and there
wished to track bugs in spreadsheets. Any such project that I work on has at
least one server available. Hell, for small consulting projects I just use one
of the servers running in my house to bootstrap things.

You know, you can get a RaspberryPi and plenty of flash storage space for
running as a server (with Bugzilla, an MTA, and everything) for projects for
less than $50.

If you're referring to small personal projects then sure. Use a text file or a
spreadsheet or strings tied to your fingers to remind you of things.

~~~
klodolph
> I'd say Excel is superior to those systems for any one-person project.

> I was referring to professional software projects where I've had to work
> with other people

We're having different discussions. It happens. I was pretty careful about
choice of words: I said "tiny" and "one-person" rather than "small". For a
"small" project I'd use Bugzilla or Trac or whatever makes the grass greener
with the least fertilizer.

Not every developer wants to be a sysadmin. Some developers are hobbyists with
a single Windows machine—for those developers, Bugzilla administration might
be an arduous task which requires skills they don't want to waste graymatter
on.

------
FollowSteph3
I look at excel like a car. What's happening is that most people who use don't
have a license. What's worse they've mainly learned to drive on the farm.

Now rather than hire a professional or take performance driving courses they
try and do the same in high end usage and things go wrong.

It's not the sports car that's at fault by someone driving it at the edge of
its performance without the proper skill. If the just drove it around town
they'd be fine, but taking a high performance car to the track with no
experience, well bad things happen. We've all seen youtube clips of high
performance crashes from inexperience ;)

------
neilk
I wondered if there might be a market for an Excel correctness checker. If
billions are on the line, it might be worth a few bucks. But apparently Excel
can advise you of common problems like these already.

[http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/correct-
common-...](http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/correct-common-
errors-in-formulas-HA010066323.aspx)

Probably that means such an add-on would not be sellable? However it wouldn't
be the first time someone paid lots of money for something that software they
owned already did just fine.

~~~
danbruc
There is probably not much you could check. You could probably do some type
checking but beyond that I see - ad hoc - not much one could do. Excel does
already catch syntax errors and a few other errors mentioned in the link.
Maybe you could make these errors more prominent. But should we really
encourage more development using office software? Shouldn't we solve the
actual problem?

------
robomartin
Use a hammer. Hit your thumb instead of the nail. Blame the hammer.

Use a table saw. Cut off three fingers instead of wood. Blame the table saw.

Go scuba diving. Return to the surface too fast. Get the bends. Blame the
equipment.

Drive a car. Have an accident while texting. Blame the phone.

Go fishing. Be careless. Put a hook through your hand. Blame the fishing rod,
the reel and the hook.

Use Excel. Don't make an effort to learn what you are doing. Mindlessly copy
and paste. Do not seek out peer review. Cause massive financial losses. Blame
Excel.

Boy, do I like the sound of the word "moron".

------
niggler
I'm reminded of a similar situation involving treasury secretary Timothy
Geithner and TurboTax. He initially blamed the software for underpayment of
tax (or at least he said he used turbotax) and later admitted that he fudged
the numbers.

Excel is sometimes the culprit (Excel 97 bug:
[http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-
excel/archive/2007/09/25...](http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-
excel/archive/2007/09/25/calculation-issue-update.aspx) ), but usually manual
error is to blame.

------
crusso
Huh, a second ago there was a comment here asking how this article was on the
front page... then it was disappeared. Call Alex Jones.

I wanted to voice my thought anyway... this article prominently features the
information that the mainly cited study showing that national debt is bad is
no longer valid. Those wanting to fight for higher debt levels are absolutely
ecstatic and will up-vote any article that even tangentially mentions the
Reinhart/Rogoff failure.

------
anigbrowl
So stupid. This is like blaming math because you made an error in your
arithmetic.

------
nhebb
Oh yeah, if the Reinhardt-Rogoff spreadsheet had been correct all of our
economic problems would be non-existent. Damn you, Excel!

------
kfk
People could use R or python and do similar mistakes. I am creating a small
algorithm to analyze stock prices and I am just realizing how easy is to mess
up in these things.

Unfortunately, these things are treated like earthquakes in some countries:
it's rare, we don't care. However, bad quality of reports is not rare. But the
problem is: companies do not have other ways. They are stuck with the big
players (SAP, Oracle, etc.) and they can't understand why their IT stack is
crap.

I wish from all this Excel bashing we could have a serious talk about these
tools. BEFORE writing any line of code, we must first understand deeply why
professionals use Excel in this way and what we can do about it.

Finally, realize that the "cloud" is not considered always "safe". People put
in Excel all kind of "secret" data and they are scared of having them on a
third party server. Please, consider this too when thinking about a possible
solution.

------
mtalantikite
There is an error in their reporting. The paper calling Reinhart-Rogoff into
question came out of UMass Amherst, not Amherst (which implies Amherst
College). Very different.

One is a large state school, the other an elite liberal arts school. UMass
Amherst has a notoriously leftist econ program, Amherst College your typical
neo-liberal.

------
DigitalSea
A bad mechanic will always blame his tools. Having extensively used Excel once
upon a time there is nothing like it out there, period. If you want a powerful
spreadsheet, Excel is your goto guy. Just because people are misusing Excel
does not make it bad.

------
anuraj
Excel do not seem to be the cause - poor knowledge of using the tool is. You
can argue that excel needs to be simpler than it is to learn - but then until
something better for ubiquitous use (not forgetting SPSS and other tools which
are way more complex) comes along - excel literacy is what is needed. Excel
has its own quirks, but it also is capable of doing powerful modelling if you
are ready to get out of the novice levels - but you also need advanced levels
mathematics and statistics knowledge to be able to use them. Programming is
not a panacea - financial and statistical modelling is beyond average
programmer's level of proficiency.

------
inthewoods
People have raised some great issues with Excel. For me, the biggest problem
that I dealt with all the time when I worked on Wall Street was just the lack
of one, central place for all Excel "code" - to me, it makes it exceedingly
difficult to understand a spreadsheet or debug it. The "smartest" use I've
seen is essentially just using Excel to store the data and then converting the
"code" to VB script. Of course, one can argue at that point you might as well
have the data in SQL or other database as well.

------
mjn
An earlier discussion of role of Excel models in the financial sector:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5198187>

One interesting thing that came out of that thread was a link to this review
article on spreadsheet errors:
[http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/spreadsheet/product_pubs_files...](http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/spreadsheet/product_pubs_files/Literature.pdf)

~~~
memracom
There is a whole organization with an annual conference for the past 10 years,
that is dedicated to analyzing spreadsheet errors.
<http://www.eusprig.org/index.htm>

This is a big deal. In fact, the ResolverONE spreadsheet was created as a way
to reduce the risk of the kind of errors that are discussed at the EUSPRIG
conferences.

------
ww520
Blame the tool. Yeah, very mature. Garbage in garbage out. What do you expect?

------
flatfilefan
"A tribe of Native Americans entered the wrong row into the cell of the Excel
... Just kidding. The error was made in Lotus." - I wonder if Afrika is not
making a big mistake with Ubuntu now :-)

------
Confusion

      The popular Microsoft program has been implicated in the financial crisis
    

In additional breaking news, oxygen has been implicated in the fincial crisis.

------
caster_cp
And before Excel, the pencil was the root of all miscalculation evil. Damn
you, pencils!

------
chenster
Sounds more like human errors. It's just silly to blame the tool instead.

------
D9u
Garbage in, garbage out...

------
michaelochurch
Excel isn't the problem. _Mediocrity_ is. Or, I should say, mediocrity _when
you need something more_ (like reliability, because you're making major
decisions based on the data furnished).

Excel is _great_ at providing a mediocre database, presentation template,
calculation engine, and model builder, all-in-one. It's even Turing complete
(although it makes it hard to write decent code, since that's not the point.)
It does a large number of things, and a mediocre job of all. Often, this is
enough. It gets the job done for small toy problems, and often that's a start.
However, basing billion-dollar decisions based on Excel code? Are you kidding
me?

This is exactly _why_ I rail so hard (and without giving, ever) against
Corporate injections into software. Corporate America is founded on mediocrity
being good enough. Sometimes it is. Sometimes, it's fucking not. When it's
not, stop using Excel as a database (it's not one) and fire all your
CommodityJavaDevelopers writing SingletonVisitorFactories and start doing
things right. Since you don't know how, you have to hire someone like me and
give that person _lots_ of autonomy, but it can be done.

~~~
throwawaay
Excuse me, but given your history of writing overly verbose, self-important
Grand Proclamations: I imagine the only reason someone would _have_ to hire
you is if they wanted tomes written about how they could Do Things Right while
probably not getting much actual work product done in return.

~~~
thucydides
Church's writing is consistently insightful and interesting. This is a silly
attack.

~~~
throwawaay
When someone spouts big talk like "start doing things right. Since you don't
know how, you have to hire someone like me and give that person lots of
autonomy, but it can be done" and all they're known for (please correct me if
I'm wrong here) is writing a lot of text on HN, I don't think a little snark
is out of line.

I get that railing against unsympathetic targets like big corporations makes
for entertaining reading, but I don't think that actually qualifies anyone for
the job he was describing.

------
racl101
The program is only as good as the input it gets. Garbage in, Garbage out.
Lazy and incompetent people would misuse any tool no matter how good it was.

