[ale] SO vs OO

[Bjorn Dittmer-Roche]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, Geoffrey wrote:

> Jim Popovitch wrote:
> > On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 20:17, Geoffrey wrote:
> >
> >
> >> To me, this is such a cop out.  Very few people reuse word
> >> documents.
> >
> >
> > Word docs probably aren't as good an issue as Excel spreadsheets.  I
> > know my company emails them left and right like bandwidth was free.
> > :)
>
> Still, the same applies.  In general there are two wide spread uses of
> spreadsheets.  People use them as either databases or tables.  It's a
> rare occasion to find someone who actually uses a spreadsheet as it was
> originally intended (mathematically calculations on large amounts of
> data).  That being said, the general cases are typical uses of the wrong
> tool.  Spreadsheets used in place of a database should be replaced with
> a database.  Spread sheets used as a table are easily converted to a
> spreadsheet from another Office suite.

The fact that spread sheets were origianlly designed for one thing and are
now good at other things doesn't mean they are the wrong tool, it just
means that the tools have evolved, which is a good thing. It means non
computer saavy people can manage simple databases and everyone can make
complex tableswith ease. Moreover they can do both of these things by just
learning one simple tool.

	bjorn