Buongiorno, un follow-up. Giovanni Biscuolo <giovanni@biscuolo.net> writes: [...]
Effettivamente di storie dell'Errore causate dall'uso spregiudicato dei fogli di calcolo ce ne sono ormai parecchie, adesso *pare* ne abbiamo una nuova:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/05/how-excel-may-have-caused-l...
[...] La notizia è apparsa anche su "The Spreadsheet News Network": «UK Government loses data because of Excel mistake.» https://yewtu.be/watch?v=zUp8pkoeMss Pare, *pare*, che tutti gli indizi evidenzino un penoso vendor lock-in a una vecchia versione di MS Excell, *forse* per l'utilizzo di macro non più supportate nelle nuove versioni. Il caso giustamente ha trovato posto nelle "Horror Stories" curate dallo European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (EUSpRig) con identificativo POB2001: http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm Questo articolo di Nicole Kobie del 13 Ottobre 2020: «Meet the Excel warriors saving the world from spreadsheet disaster» https://www.wired.co.uk/article/spreadsheet-excel-errors racconta l'eroica missione di EUSpRig, il nocciolo della questione è: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- [...] The process of examining each spreadsheet is unique. There are software and tools to look for inconsistent formulas or problems with the structure, but a human touch is still required, says Simon Thorne, a lecturer in computing at Cardiff Metropolitan University and a EUSpRig member, because logical problems can’t be picked up by such tools. [...] “The logic is flawed in some way, and they [errors] are hard to spot because you have to be a domain expert to understand that it’s the wrong choice in a scenario.” To audit a complex spreadsheet, Miric uses software to go line-by-line to spot errors, as well as ones that could crop up from continued use. One basic test is to change the inputs and see if the outputs react as expected, perhaps putting in extremely high figures or random letters. In short, that means this work comes down to spending entire days reading spreadsheets. [...] That’s a common theme for this work: even the people who make a spreadsheet can’t always explain what’s happening in it. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- La *semplice* e "banale" realtà dei fatti è che chi "inserisce logica" in uno spreadsheet è SVILUPPATORE che usa un IDE (Integrated Development Environment, al 99.9% grafica) per programmare... purtroppo spesso a sua insaputa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_development --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- The most popular EUD tool is the spreadsheet.[4][5] Due to their unrestricted nature, spreadsheets allow relatively un-sophisticated computer users to write programs that represent complex data models, while shielding them from the need to learn lower-level programming languages.[6] Because of their common use in business, spreadsheet skills are among the most beneficial skills for a graduate employee to have, and are therefore the most commonly sought after[7] In the United States of America alone, there are an estimated 13 million end-user developers programming with spreadsheets[8] --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- (il resto dell'articolo merita, in particolare "Cost-benefit modeling" ma soprattutto "Criticism".) Interessantissima, a questo proposito, la ricerca «End User Computing: The Dark Matter (and Dark Energy) of Corporate IT» https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239765100_End_User_Computing_The_Da... --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- [...] We saw in the previous section that corporations on U.S. stock exchanges are required to maintain strong controls over all material aspects of financial reporting. We also saw that the use of spreadsheets of material importance is very common in financial reporting. There is little control over these spreadsheets, so it is difficult to see how these corporations are in compliance with Sarbanes–Oxley. [...] There are many other indications that spreadsheet applications are extremely important. For example, Croll (2005) studied spreadsheet use in the City of London (the financial district of London). He concluded that “the City of London runs on spreadsheets.” He also noted that in an environment that routinely handles transactions worth hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, “nothing of importance happens without passing through a spreadsheet.” Hinh, Lewicki, and Wilkinson (2009) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory discussed the importance of spreadsheets at JPL in a paper titled, “How Spreadsheets Get Us to Mars and Beyond.” [...] In fact, a lack of serious testing has been reported in every study that has looked at testing in spreadsheet development. Studies have shown that companies rarely test their spreadsheets extensively [...] Furthermore, when spreadsheet users do what they call testing, what they do is typically a pale imitation of what programmers do when they test. [...] In addition, end user applications raise several other concerns. One is privacy. Too many application files contain personally identifiable information (PII) that companies have an obligation to protect. The leakage of even a single spreadsheet or data file containing such information can be a disaster for a firm. [...] Given that end user computing is many years old, how can these conclusions be true? The simple answer is that we have not looked at end user computing seriously in the past. [...] Spreadsheet error rates at the module level are about the same as statement error rates in 3GL programming, so spreadsheet development tools per se are not the problem. The problem appears to be poor application development, especially an almost complete lack of comprehensive testing. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- ...lo studio analizza *solo* il "Corporate IT", e la ricerca scientifica? Ma davvero non c'è modo per gli "end-users" (mi dissocio da questa definizione) di programmare utilizzando un linguaggio (magari in un DSL) *e* una IDE che NON mascherino completamente anche il solo fatto che si stia programmando, con tutto ciò che ne consegue in termini di tecniche e tool per il testing e il debugging?!? …mica per tutto, almeno per le cose importanti? Secondo me "lo spreadsheet" è IL problema :-D Saluti, Giovanni. P.S.: il solo fatto che si usi "Excel" come sinonimo di "spreadsheet" come se non esistesse altro la dice lunga sulla maturità del settore, compreso EUSpRig -- Giovanni Biscuolo