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I see it uses numerical designations for both the columns and rows allowing indexing like a 2D matrix. Nice. One of the many annoyances of Excel is the alphabetic columns that make even less sense beyond 26.


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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxBg4sMusIg


Baby mode?! As a full grown adult, I find the cognitive load of the base 26 arithmetic of "what column is an offset of 8 to the right of AW" to be exactly what I needed to fully forget about what I came there to do in the first place


Baby’s lack object persistence and a formed theory of mind, seems to check out.


Never seen anyone actually use this.

The "real" answer is to use names and tables. That and generally not having data flying up down left and right.


Agreed! Hard cell references should rarely be used. Names for metadata variables (eg. Current_Month) and tables for datasets.


Yes. But many parts of excel don't support those. E.g. conditional formatting just doesn't deal with names.

Also, when you need names, it is a sign to reach for a proper programming enviroment like Delphi or Lazarus.


some of us have some logical dyslexia, so when I see a tuple of numerics, even if you say (this is the row, this is the column, this is the table), when I'm manipulating references, or finding a tuple in the dark, I easily mix up the order of the bits, because lets face it, it's arbitrary.

So, while your logic makes sense, it voids humanity in a rather stark way which I suppose is fine, but it's not like I'm incapable of programming. I just have to be careful about how I name variables and use keywords in python more often than args.




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