Ireland’s Diarmuid Early wins world Microsoft Excel title

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4qzgvxxgvo

106•1659447091•2h ago

Comments

jjmarr•1h ago

Does Microsoft gain useful information about product UX from this? Wondering if any Excel PMs watch this and see where micro-optimizations are made.

lysace•59m ago

Excel was completed at least a decade ago (probably two).

triclops200•1h ago

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?

Obligatory Krazam sketch: https://youtu.be/xubbVvKbUfY?si=h6QR2gzac48R6kca

sieep•1h ago

From my understanding it wasn't started or ran by Microsoft. They have Microsoft listed as the first sponsor on their main website, for what it's worth.

https://fmworldcup.com/

airstrike•1h ago

Pretty sure it started as a joke and evolved into a real thing. I actually won an Excel spreadsheet in High School quite a long while ago. Makes me wonder if I should try out...

jasonthorsness•1h ago

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.

Bridged7756•1h ago

Yup. Not too long ago they added Python scripting. Definitely beats the weird cloud scripting you have to do with Google Sheets.

HPsquared•27m ago

Excel Python runs in the cloud. It is nicely integrated though.

shagie•1h ago

> but your only tool is Excel instead of some programming language

There is little difference between (if (> a b) c d) and =IF((A1 > B1), C1, D1)

Excel is the most widely installed functional programming language IDE.

OoooooooO•57m ago

Change the language of your Windows system to anything but English and then open your Excel file with formulas again.

mmooss•34m ago

ok, what happens? (I'm not messing around on my system right now ...)

NooneAtAll3•27m ago

I don't get your point

programming languages aren't allowed to be in non-english somehow?

paddy_m•1h ago

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?

colmmacc•1h ago

The Oscars, The Golden Globes, the Emmys, just a few!

salviati•1h ago

You never get to see the action there. Just the finished product.

Waterluvian•1h ago

I think this may actually be two different things. Much like how being good at coding doesn’t mean it’s fun to watch you code. Though there are “performance” coders where it really is!

chongli•39m ago

Although they do have a category for best editing, it's hard to call it an award for "best film editor" when it doesn't control for the overall quality of the film. For example, with the Oscars, it's extremely common (2/3 of the time) for a film that wins best picture to also win best editing.

anamexis•32m ago

I wonder how you could construct a reasonably controlled competition for film editing.

lysace•1h ago

Programming efficiency isn’t about typing/editing fast - it’s about great decision-making. (Although I have seen the combo of both working out very well.)

doctorhandshake•54m ago

I used to work as technical director for a touring live graphic design, 3D modeling, and animation tournament. It was kind of like iron chef for designers. They worked live in timed rounds with their screens projected overhead. It was sponsored by Adobe, Autodesk, and Wacom. It was pretty impressive to see how power users did their thing for sure.

two-sandwich•1h ago

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 enjoy the idea, and love watching it grow.

stackghost•55m ago

Excel is a general purpose computing environment and has been for quite some time.

When I was in the air force we had a complete aircraft maintenance planning and performance management system entirely in Excel. It can connect to remote workbooks on a shared drive/SharePoint too, so the higher headquarters would tie into our dashboard for their own operational readiness tracking.

It was a total shit show of undocumented pseudo APIs with zero change management or version control but it worked somehow.

medell•34m ago

It used to be financial modeling but they realized they’d get more attention with the esports audience this way.

It’s gone quite far now - one of the many challenges was a mock terrain map where you’d calculate distances to hike while considering the weight of your pack. Even the way they walk through the tunnel is done for show.

3eb7988a1663•1h ago

There is also the mocumentary flick of the Excel eTournament scene with "Makro"

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

beasthacker•1h ago

This is too good.

machros•43m ago

Not unlikely it inspired the whole pro excel scene to exist.

HPsquared•26m ago

Life imitates art.

Apocryphon•10m ago

Don’t forget part two

https://youtu.be/ICp2-EUKQAI

donsupreme•1h ago

Should be 'Michael Jordan of spreadsheets'

littlestymaar•1h ago

Did he retired spreadsheets to become a professional baseball player?

buybackoff•46m ago

The Spiderman would be better. If anyone used formulas' precedents/dependents that would be instantly visual.

d-lisp•1h ago

Looks a bit like vimgolfing [0]

[0] https://www.vimgolf.com/

buybackoff•1h ago

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.

xattt•50m ago

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.

otterley•36m ago

It's almost as though organizations are made of human beings who have complicated relationships, differing opinions, and nuanced thinking.

secretsatan•26m ago

Possibly messing with the guys who handle the money make for the loudest complaints

bongodongobob•16m ago

I had a negative view of MS when I was young. Then I got jobs at large orgs managing IT for 1000s of people. I don't know how else you'd do it without the Microsoft stack. I'm not saying you can't, but good luck managing whatever custom ball of knots you manage to come up with and also finding people to work on it for you. If you think open office and some kind of custom IAM solution will work, you just don't have the experience to have an opinion on it, IMHO.

djaouen•57m ago

Come Feel The Heat With These Great Feats of Spreadsheets lol

Edit: Of course, they changed the title! [1]

[1] https://share.google/qJYSGYMKihkjh7bql

NooneAtAll3•26m ago

Any link to the problems that were being solved?

scop•15m ago

You know what they say about the Irish and spreadsheets…

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