I had no idea this was real. Fascinating. I'm curious: anyone plugged into the scene know if it's organic or if it was created as a marketing thing by Microsoft?
The descriptions of the problems make it sound a little like algorithmic puzzles but your only tool is Excel instead of some programming language… Excel is pretty amazing in what you can do; I’ve regretted having to use Google Sheets for the last few years.
I wish more programmers would pay attention to how productive power users in different can be with their tools. Look at CAD competitions. I wonder if there are video editting competitions?
In high school, I participated in a STEM-based competition. There were a ton of categories like CO2 dragsters (my favorite), architecture, 2D and 3D CAD, GIS, and numerous others I can't remember. Some categories had more of a business focus but most were science/engineering related. The 3D CAD one was pretty fun. I recall two parts. In the first half, you got a hand-drawn sketch of a bushing and had to recreate it in Autodesk Inventor as fast as possible and then generate a 2D drawing properly dimensioned (like what you'd hand to a machinist). The second half involved creating all of the parts for a basic ceiling fan and then making an animated exploded view that also spun the fan. I was really good at that stuff back then but I definitely wasn't the quickest. I'm sure it's a lot different now, so much of CAD now involved CNC and 3D printing that's there's probably aspects that include messing with gcode now.
My GIS competition was fun too. They gave me a bunch of map data and I had to produce a report on Washington DC storm surge flood zones and potential rescue helicopter locations all within a couple hours.
I recall there being a video production category too. I didn't compete in it but you'd be given props and dialogue to turn into a video over the course of a day or two. Very few of the categories were contemporaneous competitions, most were long term project presentations.
It's interesting that the challenges are not business or accounting centred, as is the expectation when using Excel. If this is now general problem solving, are we watching language-specific competitive programming through the lens of a more broadly accessible platform like MS Excel?
I could do half-screen nested array formulas when Excel was before the ribbon (and screen resolutions were smaller), out of necessity and because I could. It was in quite demanding uni home calculations and then mostly when working as intern in IB. But then having a life is also important...
The only thing I still enjoy is that any data smaller than 1M rows is sliced and diced almost without thinking. I am sometimes really grateful that MS did not break the shortcuts, while almost breaking the product overall. The muscle memory works perfectly.
I don’t understand how a Microsoft team that respects its customers (and maintains shortcuts) can co-exist in an org that sees their customer as marks.
I'll never forget a past job where they used a lot of Excel in ways I did not know was possible.
First of all they had an invoicing system in Excel, that pulled in data using VBS, into Excel templates, and at the press of a button in the UI generated invoices from these templates.
And the craziest part was their server inventory system made in Excel, where they had drawn all the rack cabinets, you could click on each, to drill down and show all the servers in that rack. Also a ton of VBS, you could even get monitoring status of each rack.
Excel has been OP for a long time, long before its Python capabilities.
My best Excel trick, which reveals how little I know, and yet Early [0] doesn't use it (or maybe doesn't need it, but that's hard to believe):
1. You can drag down the bottom of the formula bar/field and make it multi-line
2. You can insert arbitrary[*] newlines in an Excel formula
Combining those, you can turn the absurd default format of single-line-of-code functions into something readable and manageable. Here's a simple one from a spreadsheet I have open:
And just think of highly nested functions. Once you know it, writing single-line functions of any complexity is absurd, as absurd as writing 'real' code that way.
Can anyone find the actual challenge files? Not that I would be competitive at all, but the description of last year's World of Warcraft themed one is interesting, and I want to walk through it.
So BBC is quickly turning into an AI slop lake. The article text is stretched so much to fit 10 ads, with the real content tucked away only at the end.
Good to see that AI slop would inundate and suffocate these media houses.
People praise MS Word and Excel there, shitting down on Markdown and proper languages.
The thing is, you have RTF covering a 99% of actual office cases. For the rest, a DTP would be far better, or Texmacs which is far superior for academics. The old WordPad with tables (and Ted for Unix once it's properly setup) would enough to do most boring documentation.
On Excel, just look what happened with Genomics. Also, overabusing Access for management (or worse, to handle Covid cases in a shitty XLS table) it's a nightmare.
For tons of cases TCL/Tk + a Sqlite3 backend would perfectly work and it would be accesible to any platform, from GNU/Linux to MacOS, BSD, Windows. You can stick an HTML5 frontend with ease without even needing JS to access the data (plain HTML forms would work really well).
Ah, yes, graphs, charts. Gnuplot would help you in that case, or a fast Tk
package. Reports? TkHTML with some easy CSS. It would cost far more initially? The potential risks on compatibility would be nil in a future. And, as a plus, yo don't have to worry about Macro viruses and whatever.
I watched the walkthrough video of the solutions and it's genuinely impressive. These aren't just "use VLOOKUP fast" challenges - they're algorithmic puzzles where Excel is the constraint.
What struck me is how similar it is to code golf or competitive programming, just with a different medium. The winner uses array formulas, INDEX/MATCH combinations, and nested functions in ways that most Excel power users would never think of.
The real insight though: Excel is probably the most widely-deployed functional programming environment in the world. Most "business users" are doing functional composition daily without realizing it.
Makes me wonder if we should be teaching programming concepts through Excel first, then moving to traditional languages. The immediate visual feedback is unmatched.
A CS grad that ended up in banking/consulting. This was common in my country 10-20 years ago with no FAANGs in the area and Nasdaq hadn't popped off yet. It was the only way to get decent salary and not 40k at a mom and pop IT shop doing network switch configuration.
Doesn't really count in my opinion. I'd rather see finance/business majors stumble upon their version of LeetCode.
32 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 57.5 ms ] threadObligatory Krazam sketch: https://youtu.be/xubbVvKbUfY?si=h6QR2gzac48R6kca
Yes - but they've turned into something I'd really rather not watch: https://www.opus.pro/agent/human-creator-vs-ai
My GIS competition was fun too. They gave me a bunch of map data and I had to produce a report on Washington DC storm surge flood zones and potential rescue helicopter locations all within a couple hours.
I recall there being a video production category too. I didn't compete in it but you'd be given props and dialogue to turn into a video over the course of a day or two. Very few of the categories were contemporaneous competitions, most were long term project presentations.
I enjoy the idea, and love watching it grow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xubbVvKbUfY
[0] https://www.vimgolf.com/
The only thing I still enjoy is that any data smaller than 1M rows is sliced and diced almost without thinking. I am sometimes really grateful that MS did not break the shortcuts, while almost breaking the product overall. The muscle memory works perfectly.
Edit: Of course, they changed the title! [1]
[1] https://share.google/qJYSGYMKihkjh7bql
I'm pretty good with Excel, my main tool at the job for over 20 years. I understand how he did it, but it's just really humbling...
I still think quality of what you do with Excel (idea) is more important than how you do it (skill).
First of all they had an invoicing system in Excel, that pulled in data using VBS, into Excel templates, and at the press of a button in the UI generated invoices from these templates.
And the craziest part was their server inventory system made in Excel, where they had drawn all the rack cabinets, you could click on each, to drill down and show all the servers in that rack. Also a ton of VBS, you could even get monitoring status of each rack.
Excel has been OP for a long time, long before its Python capabilities.
1. You can drag down the bottom of the formula bar/field and make it multi-line
2. You can insert arbitrary[*] newlines in an Excel formula
Combining those, you can turn the absurd default format of single-line-of-code functions into something readable and manageable. Here's a simple one from a spreadsheet I have open:
And just think of highly nested functions. Once you know it, writing single-line functions of any complexity is absurd, as absurd as writing 'real' code that way.[0] Early shows how it was done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46340638
[*] I think you can do it anywhere but I haven't tested anything crazy; mostly I just use them between expressions.
Good to see that AI slop would inundate and suffocate these media houses.
The thing is, you have RTF covering a 99% of actual office cases. For the rest, a DTP would be far better, or Texmacs which is far superior for academics. The old WordPad with tables (and Ted for Unix once it's properly setup) would enough to do most boring documentation.
On Excel, just look what happened with Genomics. Also, overabusing Access for management (or worse, to handle Covid cases in a shitty XLS table) it's a nightmare.
For tons of cases TCL/Tk + a Sqlite3 backend would perfectly work and it would be accesible to any platform, from GNU/Linux to MacOS, BSD, Windows. You can stick an HTML5 frontend with ease without even needing JS to access the data (plain HTML forms would work really well).
Ah, yes, graphs, charts. Gnuplot would help you in that case, or a fast Tk package. Reports? TkHTML with some easy CSS. It would cost far more initially? The potential risks on compatibility would be nil in a future. And, as a plus, yo don't have to worry about Macro viruses and whatever.
What struck me is how similar it is to code golf or competitive programming, just with a different medium. The winner uses array formulas, INDEX/MATCH combinations, and nested functions in ways that most Excel power users would never think of.
The real insight though: Excel is probably the most widely-deployed functional programming environment in the world. Most "business users" are doing functional composition daily without realizing it.
Makes me wonder if we should be teaching programming concepts through Excel first, then moving to traditional languages. The immediate visual feedback is unmatched.
Doesn't really count in my opinion. I'd rather see finance/business majors stumble upon their version of LeetCode.