Sorry, no Schadenfreude allowed!!

Hi...

in my last posting I was bit harsh to Apple because of the security of its iPhone. OK, now I learned that they even block out 3rd party software. If you try to mess around with it, it will simply block itself for ever. Anyway, this is not on me to comment... think about the guy using a three year old mobile phone and a even older MP3 player commenting on iPhones...

So I did that posting and seconds later I learned about that Excel bug. You will find details on this here https://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/26b.html To make things short: Type in "=77.1*850" and wonder what this is all about. Joel gives a good explanation why with background infos.

OK, so whenever I had some Schadenfreude about others the kickback came right away. Thank you - who ever you are - for that lesson.

On the other hand this Excel bug also shows something on user experience. In Joel's article he says that possibly the Excel team did intense testing by using Visual Basic for Application. The thing is that the value in the cell is calculated correctly but its presentation is wrong. So by using VB you'll get the right value and tick the test as ok. Only if you really read what is presented to the user the result is wrong.

While certainly some people in the Excel team are rushing to first fix that bug and then develop a new testing routine this is a nice lesson on the fact that internal representation and external appearance can differ enormously.

CU

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