this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
451 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
83222 readers
5038 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
May I suggest Python ?
By the time you get tits deep in Excel to the point where other spreadsheets can't hack it, you may as well be using a real programming language instead of VBA...
If you can do advanced Excel, you can do Python (and numpy will crush Excel in ways that aren't even funny, well OK, it's funny too).
btw, libreoffice calc supports python macros, so you don't need to choose between the two
I know, but capturing business logic in spreadsheets is a different error I didn't want to get into here... You do what you can.
Is python realistic for non tech people? I have a lot of databases across sharepoint but no real tech knowledge beyond basics.
It's one of the friendliest programming languages around. If you have written something in VBA then you'll do fine with Python, except for all the bad/outdated nonsense you'll have picked up from that language. And there's interactive interpreters you can just mess around in.
If this doesn't scare you then give it a look:
it was partly made for mathematicians who did not know how to develop software, but also for education. so I guess it's a good starter language. but it allows doing way too much things that will be very confusing when overused
If you are running multiple databases you are already a "tech people"
Sharepoint is not a "database". Many people have made that mistake and it eventually comes back to bite you.
I would recommend learning SQL. It is made to be human readable, and we've been perfecting it since the 1960's.
Python let you run SQL on any file, and standard DB technology with a very small number of lines of code. Recommend reading about Pandas
I would just have a lot of interdependent excels on sharepoint, think customer data and their respective equipment, serials, progression. I detest microsoft sooving away woupd be ideal and if I can do it while getting my head around python then great.
I have no idea what pandas is.
Python is a modular language, so it has various packages to do different things you need to do. Whether that's math, graphing, database querying, language parsing, machine learning, or pretty much anything else you can think of, there's probably a python package for it. You just need to install the package in addition to the basic python library, and import the packages you're gonna use into your scripts.
Pandas is a python package commonly used for data analysis. Another one is Agate.
If you're learning SQL, there's a python package called SQLAlchemy that will enhance your database operations. Another one is Agate-SQL, which integrates with Agate. Both are interoperable with SQLite (for local storage) and PostgreSQL (for server-based setups).
NumPy and Numba are python packages used for most math operations, and there are various other packages for higher-level math in case you need to do linear algebra, matrix multiplications, tensor calculus, or whathaveyou.
Matplotlib and Plotly are used for graphing, and there are others with more advanced features like interactive data visualization.
These are just a few examples. If you're in geoinformatics, astrophysics, cybersecurity, or just about anything else, there are python packages that will expand your toolkit.
You won't find any applicants for a secretary, HR, or accounting position if it requires knowledge of Python.
None of those positions are expected to know VBA script either.
If an accountant can't do a VLOOKUP. I would be concerned
No, but for these OnlyOffice is a viable alternative. @surgarsweat was referring to way advanced features, not something secretaries or HR or accounting will need. I have use OnlyOffice for 6 years now, and have yet to find an Excel need it could not fulfill.
I've tried OnlyOffice for personal use and it's just okay. There are some things that I consider basic that I tried to do and either they didn't work or it got super slow/laggy/crashed.
Nah man. Advanced is a relative term. Making formulas in a spreadsheet can be advanced vs just typing stuff in there to make easy layouts.
Perhaps you underestimate people.
I've done IT consulting work for a company that had switched to an open source software stack and were forced to go back to MS because they literally couldn't fill necessary positions and it was threatening to kill the business.
And this was at a time where there was a surplus of applicants for every position. They just all noped out when they were told they'd have to learn to use different software.
I've worked for dozens of companies as MSP and now I'm leading the in-house IT of a company with 300 employees. The picture is the same everywhere: Most office workers have simply memorized the exact steps needed for their role. Take away the tools they're used to and their productivity drops to zero, while IT support workload goes through the roof.
Yup, seen it too, sucked, don't think it's the way forward though. Europe seems to agree, should be enough momentum.
This is the real answer.