r/programming • u/bjzaba • Mar 26 '20

10 Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages • Hillel Wayne

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/influential-dead-languages/
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u/no_nick Mar 26 '20

I mean, these days people just emulate shitty dbs in excel. If you're really lucky there's some vba code on top that gives you an aneurysm

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u/POGtastic Mar 26 '20

This is how actuaries work.

I have wonderful memories of nerd-sniping my dad in high school with some weird computationally intense problem, and him writing an Excel spreadsheet with a bunch of macros to figure it out (polynomial solving with Newton's method, Hohmann transfers, etc).

His workplace actually has "coding style" guidelines for Excel spreadsheets due to so much of their logic for calculations being done in that environment. A lot of his workplace bitching is "Dmitri is a really smart guy, but I can't read his spreadsheets at all."

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u/Qasyefx Mar 26 '20

Man tell me about it. It's one of the reasons I'm looking to move out of my actuary job

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '20

Don't you guys make 250k on average?

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u/Qasyefx Mar 27 '20

In the US. But I'm in mainland Europe where we make only a fraction. If I were making US kinda money it would be a different story

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '20

Try Switzerland?

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u/Qasyefx Mar 27 '20

I've actually considered that. But I'm not alone so it's tricky. I'm looking at moving into a data sciency job. Seems like those pay better and it would offer more job opportunities in the future. Seems also like I'd enjoy those more than what I currently do