I’ve talked about how it’s important to understand the deal when using software and how you also have to understand if using the software comes with a catch. That’s great for programs and apps that you use by yourself. What about larger systems that are used by lots of people. Those that help run whole business or organizations? An important consideration is to know how your work in the system impacts others. People do better with large systems if they know what they are doing and why. This was brought home to me years ago when I was working at a hospital that got taken over by another.

This is my second post on understanding spreadsheets. In the first post I covered the deal that underlies spreadsheets and how the deal isn’t necessarily enough to know how to use spreadsheets effectively. This post covers the catch to using spreadsheets. Understanding the catch and its ramifications is important.

A catch? Yes - there is a catch to using spreadsheets. Otherwise it wouldn’t be news that the UK is missing 16,000 COVID cases being tracked in spreadsheets. If there wasn’t a catch we wouldn’t need spreadsheet warriors to help solve spreadsheet problems. There is definitely a catch to using spreadsheets.

But before I begin I need to make two separate apologies.

It helps to understand the deal in order to use software effectively. The deal is what the developers and programmers constructed into the program. You do some things and the software will do other things for you. There’s an implicit deal in well designed software.

Knowing the deal helps in using and understanding a program. I’ve already talked about the deal built in to word processors. For word processors the deal is reasonably obvious. When it comes to spreadsheets the deal isn’t as obvious. This is the first of two posts on using spreadsheets, the underlying deal, and the ramifications of that deal.

There is a Shoe comic strip I haven’t been able to track down on the Internet. In it Skyler, the nephew of Perfessor Cosmo Fishhawk, asks his uncle what a word processor does. The Perfessor says something like:

You know what a food processor does to food…

Now… word processors are better at handling words then food processors are at handling food. At least when the person using the word processor knows what the deal is.

Early in my career I learned that being selfish could be a good thing. It turns out that being personally selfish doesn’t have to be at the expense of other people.

I was one of the proverbial teenagers who could fix your computer. Very early desktop computers ended up on my desk at home and I was fascinated by them. I read all that was available - from manuals to books to magazines. I tried every piece of software I could get my hands on - from the software my parents used at their jobs, to games, to utilities to, to the listings printed in magazines, to… well anything. I broke those systems many times over. Which meant I became good at fixing them as well. I gave myself an education that couldn’t be had any other way at the time.

It’s no wonder that a large part of my early career was in PC support. I installed, upgraded, replaced, and fixed computers. I helped people use their computers. I was working in Hospitals back then - and it was a new frontier.