7 HN users recommended this tutorial6 months2024–2026score 6
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN commenters call it an internet classic that makes you a more proficient Excel user, and note it is still relevant despite predating newer functions like XLOOKUP.
A reupload of Joel Spolsky's talk teaching spreadsheet users the Excel features they are probably missing, such as keyboard navigation, named ranges, tables and lookups. The original disappeared and this copy comes from the Wayback Machine.
“will turn you into a more proficient user of Excel.” (HN, 2024)
That A1 mode is Excel "Baby-Mode", you can switch to R1C1 mode in settings. Things are far easier then, and more sane. His Excel-lence also recommends this: [this video]
Nothing capability-wise! Just speed and ease of manipulation. Maybe an analogy is doing image processing. One could write filters and other manipulations in code, or use something like Photoshop. It turns out Photoshop is a great interface for many of those tasks. I think the same thing is true for more data analysis than I'd realized because of my poor Excel skills. Still want to improve my spreadsheet abilities though. There's a fun video called You Suck at Excel by Joel Spolsky I'm halfway through [1]. Would love to know of more like this. [1] [this video]
As a well seasoned web developer, when I'm doing front-end, there are always 2 big problems: Data tables and loading indicators (fun way of saying it's hard to tackle lazy loading without a request waterfall). The second problem has had good attempts in the recent years, but no single web application can beat excel in terms of data tables (while not 100% relevant anymore, I really like the super light introduction here from Joel Spolsky: [this video] )
> Big tools like MSOffice have the ability to be put in hiring contracts: Everyone is assumed to know how to use it, so the company is allowed to deny the no training excuse without spending money. I would claim that if you haven't worked in the finance or insurance industry (or some related industry) for quite some time, you very likely don't know how to use Excel (I have a feeling that a similar points holds for Word and Powerpoint with respect to some industries, but I think for these applications this phenomenon is a little bit less pronounced). Indeed, I'd claim that most books about how to use Excel are simply crap. To just give you a glimpse how to use Excel, here some internet classic on this topic: You Suck at Excel - Joel Spolsky [this video] Really understanding Excel is life task, similar to really understanding modern C++.
I think you're thinking of "You Suck at Excel" by Joel Spolsky. [this video] Lots of past HN discussion... [link] That video was before the introduction of xlookup, which I believe is now worth considering over index and match.
> They force name and number everything which is exactly like using single letter variables, they are only allowed for simple things. This isn't true, named ranges have existed for longer than many (most?) HN readers have been alive. As far as I'm aware they were in the first version in 1985. Joel Spolsky's "you suck at Excel" is more than a decade old but still relevant: [this video]
Fair enough. My personal anecdote (and obviously your mileage may vary) is that, I've switched to Libreoffice a long time ago, and now my frustrations mirror yours except in reverse; i.e., I'm very happy and comfortable with the Libreoffice suite, and whenever I am 'forced' to work on MS Office, I find it super-unintuitive, buggy, and frustrating. So perhaps some of this is 'habit / comfort-zone' disguised as preference of functionality. Sometimes it's just simple stuff, like, being unable to resize the comment column, but even small stuff like that adds up in the end. Having said that, I'm not a heavy Excel user, yet I'm already aware of some differences between it and Calc which are probably not a simple matter of reassigning a keyboard shortcut. Switching from AB mode to RC mode is one example; in Calc you need to go to Tools::Options::Calc::Formula::Syntax to switch. But so far I've had no problems working in Calc in general. I was able to follow Joel Spolsky's infamous "You suck at Excel" video [0] with no problems, for example. [0] [this video]
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
8 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Read more
Citations, criticism and jokes
Read more