Hey thanks a lot Ralf - tons of strong points there. I'll definitely be going for Ruby now.
> The drawbacks: > 1) people could not longer use Excel > 2) no gui I'm sure I can make up for this by turning it into a smooth Rails webapp (that imitates cells), maybe coupled with a decent charting library. If anybody has any suggestions, do feel free to let me know and in turn I'll keep them posted as well. > Most important might be Unit-testing (I'm sure there are thousands of buggy excel lists in the banks out there - hey might be the REAL reason for the crisis ;-). Hahaha :) Thanks again man! On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Ralf Mueller <ralf.muel...@zmaw.de> wrote: > On 02/05/2013 08:41 AM, Dwayne Henderson wrote: > > I'm working on this financial > model<http://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/moyes/html/documents/FinancialProjectionsModelv6.8.9.xls>for > my upcoming ecommerce business using OpenOffice.org Calc (and the BASIC > programming language). But as the need for more advanced programming arises > (making the various spreadsheets more dynamic and interconnected, applying > algorithms for analyzing data and forecasts etc.) I can't help but think > that maybe this would all be a lot easier if it was Ruby. > > Is anyone aware of similar financial models made using Ruby, and if so how > are they implemented? Are they simply Ruby wrappers for Calc or Excel, or > maybe Xero, or a dedicated Rails app? > > --Dwayne > > > Hi Dwayne! > I'm not familiar with any financial models, but I've seen a lot excel > stuff for analyzing data. so here are my 2cts: > > When I worked for a x-Ray tube company, they used excel to prepare data > for the tube controller. I took 1-2 hours for every tube and only 2 people > were able to do this. My first task was to improve this situation. I used > ruby for this, although they wanted me to do this in VBA ;-) > > With my final version it was possible to create the data > 1) within 5 min per tube > 2) automatically from the command line > 3) independent of the number of data sets (excel strongly depends on the > number of rows or columns of input data). > > The drawbacks: > 1) people could not longer use Excel - I'm not kidding, this IS a real > disadvantage, because (esp.) non-programmers tend to use excel for > everything. That's why it's a lot easier to give your software away, when > you've written it in Excel (or calc). People are simply familiar with it. > 2) no gui - my gui was an editor with the config file opened. Anything > else (like a cool gui) will keep you from the problem (or I am just not > familiar with writing guis). > > I think ruby is a really good choice for doing these things - > implementation could take a while, but you'll get a lot back: Most > important might be Unit-testing (I'm sure there are thousands of buggy > excel lists in the banks out there - hey might be the REAL reason for the > crisis ;-). > As long as you do not want to change anything excel is ok, because it > simply runs. Keep in mind, who should use your software - programs are most > useful when used properly. > > regards > ralf >
