this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025

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It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes (defector.com)

submitted 6 days ago by tux0r@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

100 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Money quote:

Excel requires some skill to use (to the point where high-level Excel is a competitive sport), and AI is mostly an exercise in deskilling its users and humanity at large.

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[–] jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 137 points 6 days ago (31 children)

There are things that could be done to improve Excel. For instance, fully integrate python and allow it to be used to create custom functions. Then, maybe one day, VBA can ride off into the sunset where it belongs.

Adding Copilot to Excel is not an improvement because Copilot and all other LLM based platforms frequently barfs out totally incorrect information about how to do something in Excel.

"You do that using formula."

No, I can't, you worthless pile of shit because THAT FORMULA DOESNT EXIST.

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 67 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Integrated python scripts in excel sounds like a malware developers dream.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 36 points 6 days ago (2 children)

And a nightmare for an application developer told to make some app with a spreadsheet for a database scale

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 48 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Could result in some very cursed codebases.

"We dont use git, we just update the excel spreadsheet"

[–] Gork@sopuli.xyz 32 points 6 days ago

I've worked at places where they did that anyway lol

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That's just called Access

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Is that creepy thing still alive?

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (3 children)

It can't be ... but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. I remember making fun of Access on StackOverflow circa 2008 and running afoul of some dude there who was like the last living Access consultant on Earth. I've never encountered defensive rage like that before or since.

Fun Access fact, the Diebold-manufactured voting machines that featured prominently in the 2000 presidential election cycle used an Access database as their underlying data storage mechanism. Access DBs did incorporate an audit table - which was manually-editable.

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[–] rollerbang@lemmy.world 13 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I mean... Yeah, but the same can be said for VB?

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

Especially since VBA can make calls to the Windows API directly and through that avenue do all kinds of funky things to your system.

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[–] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 17 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Surely there’s some sort of sandboxing that could be done? Like start by disallowing sys calls entirely

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 8 points 6 days ago

Definitely, but sandboxes can be escaped, and you can't protect everything via sandbox. Apparently its all cloud anyway, but if it were local and sandboxed, there are still exploits like rowhammer and spectre that may cause further risks.

Its taken years to get browser sandboxes to where they are, and even they get broken every so often.

[–] jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 12 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Fair point. Of course that's already a problem with Excel. It would probably have to be disabled by default just like VBA macros.

[–] elvith@feddit.org 9 points 6 days ago (5 children)

They foresaw that. That's because python on Excel doesn't run locally, but in the cloud and then returns the result to you: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/introduction-to-python-in-excel-55643c2e-ff56-4168-b1ce-9428c8308545

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Still sounds like you'd be shipping your data to the cloud, where it can be exfilled from there.

Would potentially be a great phishing tool, just need to trick someone into putting sensitive data into a precooked excel file, and it gets exfilled.

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[–] Honytawk@feddit.nl 67 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Why would anyone use an LLM as calculator?

That just doesn't make sense.

It is like using a calculator as typewriter because it can spell 80085.

[–] Rambomst@lemmy.world 39 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (7 children)

So what you are saying is, my car is a typewriter?

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Microsoft might agree with this.

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[–] tux0r@feddit.org 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Heh heh 80085

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 6 points 5 days ago

High brow humour indeed

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 30 points 5 days ago

There's an old story about the lead developer at Texas Instruments saying "I want a computer that fits in my pocket". And then his staff dutifully measured the pocket to spec before proceeding to perform a feat of miniaturization that would revolutionize the modern world.

I'm trying to imagine one of the techies, from way out in the back, saying "Does it have to get the right answer?" Then getting fired, walking off the job, and walking into Microsoft with 10x the salary the next day.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Are you kidding? Microsoft has always been shit at math. According to Microsoft Excel, 2 + 2 = 12:04 AM Jan 1, 1900.

[–] BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

Integers are days in Excel, no? So I think 2+2= 12:00 AM Jan 5, 1900.

[–] Limonene@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Give Microsoft some credit! Excel has been able to come up with wrong answers for decades. For example, reporting 1900 as a leap year.

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[–] jaemo@sh.itjust.works 16 points 6 days ago

Our very own economic Butlerian jihad.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Wrong, they already had that with Excel. There were a bunch of functions that delivered wrong returns for years, and none of the users (mostly economists) had noticed.

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[–] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 4 points 5 days ago

Intel already did that in the 90's with the FDIV bug.

[–] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 7 points 5 days ago (2 children)

OK, I'm not really mad at this. I already used Copilot to design a table for me in Excel and it worked really well. It did everything for me, and I just had to copy-paste the formulas into their appropriate spots. If it's built-in, possibly will work better.

Not everybody needs to be an Excel expert, after all. Having that functionality might be actually beneficial.

[–] Lightfire228@pawb.social 9 points 5 days ago (2 children)

How do you know those formulas are correct?

[–] percent@infosec.pub 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

By verifying that they're correct...? 🤔

[–] theparadox@lemmy.world 20 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (6 children)

I think the concern is that you can come up with a number of formulas that will get correct answers for some combinations of values and not others.

If you do not understand the logic of the formula, and what each function does, how do you verify they are correct and will always give you the results you think they will? Double check every result in its entirety?

[–] Lightfire228@pawb.social 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That's my thinking

If you know what you're doing, it's significantly easier to do it yourself

You at least have some reassurance it's correct (or at least thought through)

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[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

yes okay dad

[–] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Any time, nutsack.

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 5 points 5 days ago

I'm a dad and I approve this message.

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This is such a misguided article, sorry.

Obviously you’d be an idiot to use AI to number crunch.

But AI can be extremely useful for sentence analytics. For example, if you’re trying to classify user feedback as positive or negative and then derive categories from the masses of text and squash the text into those categories.

Google Sheets already does tonnes of this and we’re not writing articles about it.

[–] BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's like complaining that a hammer isn't good at turning a screw. There's a whole trend of Chess content creators featuring games against ChatGPT where it forgets the position or plays illegal moves, and it just doesn't mean anything. ChatGPT was never designed or intended to be able to evaluate a chess position, and incidentally, we do have computer programs that do exactly that and have been better than any human player since the 1990s. So what is even the point?

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago

And what you could do is to enable an LLM to use these tools and reason about their outcome. Complaining that an LLM isn’t good at adding numbers is like complaining that humans aren’t as fast as calculators when multiplying large numbers.

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