Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
Finance dev guy here.<p>Excel's dominance in the field is because it is an _application container_ that _non_ dev people can use.<p>The workflow is this:<p>- old trader guy says to his junior guy: "hey can you look into xxx."<p>- junior trader guy says: "sure I'll make a spreadsheet for it"<p>- old trader guy: "great your model is all I need, let's trade"<p>- several weeks later, IT guy says: "hey you're running a $100m book out of a spreadsheet, we'll make you a nice system for it, cause your stuff will blow up."<p>- several months later the IT guy comes back with a web app that does the same thing as the spreadsheet.<p>- old trader guy says: "hey I can't copy shit around, my shortcuts aren't working, I need to be able to do basic maths on the side, I can't save my work, etc."<p>- IT guy: "ok I'll make you an export-to-Excel button"<p>Seriously I've seen this happen over and over again.<p>The issue is not how to get rid of Excel, it's how do we make a better spreadsheet...