My college wants me to take intro to computing; I'm a system administrator.

[Zorba]

Or take advantage of its built-in graphing capabilities: Someone at work created an external program to slice up a text file containing data to analyze, then it spits out a multi-megabyte CSV file, and finally it instructs Excel to open that file and generate a bunch of easily-editable graphs of the data.

I did a job for a while that I had to create a lot of reliability data monthly. Since many of the reports were standard reports, I automated a ton of it in Excel with VBA. I wrote a VBA program to suck in raw data, format it, setup some pivot tables, then create a powerpoint file for each fleet and then create graph and copy/format it into power point. The VBA program did all of the text and formatting in PP also. The guy who was doing it before me took 8 days each month to create these charts, I spent ~3 on the program and then could make a full set in about 5 minutes run time.

Needless to say, after I did this a few times my manager decided I was too good for his group and helped me move on to a better group (he was trying to build an empire and I was replacing his entire group with VBA).

 

[KlokWyze]

Very opinionated people about very subjective points about technology that will be obsolete in 3 years.

 

[eldorado99]

I am a sys admin and i make pretty decent money, probably more than you do. far from a dead-end career as you say.

good thing you said that, I almost lost respect

 

[OutHouse]

good thing you said that, I almost lost respect

Whew! im so happy now.

 

[freeskier93]

My wife and I are both chemical engineers. Both of us have Excel open at work pretty much 100% of the time.

I tend to use it more for data crunching / analysis and she uses it more for budgets and communications with vendors. But still, Excel is probably our most important tool.

Sure I have used Mathcad, Maple, Fluent, Wolfram Alpha, Prism, and my own custom codes in C, C++, C#, VB.NET, VB6 to do my math. But, it is Excel that keeps bringing me back due to its being pretty powerful and quick. The solver feature on Excel is probably an Engineer's best friend. Sadly, Microsoft buries it in the Add-in feature that you have to enable. But once an engineer finds it, they will never go back to almost anything else.

But have you used Matlab? I don't know how I will live life once I graduate and no longer have access to the university license.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Jesus Christ, I didn't claim that nobody uses Excel. But is it typically a part of an engineering curriculum?

 

[purbeast0]

as a software engineer i don't think i've ever used excel once in my 11 years in the industry.

in general i try to stay as far away from MS office as possible.

 

[Anubis]

But have you used Matlab? I don't know how I will live life once I graduate and no longer have access to the university license.

we at work have a site wide matlab license as well as many other such programs - in my group 1 person uses it to run some custom routine for some development thing he works on that's it

90% of work is done in excel, the other 10% is more hardcore stats is done in Minitab and or JMP, some of the statisticians use full on SAS or "R"

everything gets presented in PPT

process/chem/mech/whatever dev and engineering

 

[IronWing]

Jesus Christ, I didn't claim that nobody uses Excel. But is it typically a part of an engineering curriculum?

Building spreadsheet models used to be part of the curriculum. Building finite difference models with a spreadsheet was kind of fun. One would turn off automatic recalculation (does the option even exist anymore?) and build the grid with lots and lots and lots of copying and pasting. After making sure all the equations were correctly entered, one would turn automatic recalculation back on and watch the spreadsheet have a double hernia.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I'm trying to fathom why anyone would think the use of Excel would be a requirement in any engineering course..

On the other hand, someone getting an associates degree to be an administrative assistant (erm, secretary), sure, lots of Excel and Word and PowerPoint. And how to make coffee and order Chinese.

I'll be sure to remind my director that he doesn't need Office, OneNote, or Powerpoint anymore.

 

[CountZero]

Jesus Christ, I didn't claim that nobody uses Excel. But is it typically a part of an engineering curriculum?

It wasn't directly part of my curriculum but for many of the reports we had to do it was extremely useful. I think it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to have some excel stuff in the usual tech comms classes.

 

[IronWing]

I'll be sure to remind my director that he doesn't need ... Powerpoint anymore.

The world would be a better place.

 

[irishScott]

take it.
get an A.
profit.

This. Even if your GPA is already great it couldn't hurt to have an extra A on the record if you come across more difficult courses in the future.

 

[Zeze]

Seriously what's the problem here?

A. Spend your energy to fight the battle and finally get an approval to do an independent study for this course. And actually perform said study by spending more energy.

B. Just get an easy A. Move on with life.

 

[Jeff7]

The world would be a better place.

Mmmmm, whiteboard marker smell.

 

[Zorba]

Jesus Christ, I didn't claim that nobody uses Excel. But is it typically a part of an engineering curriculum?

Pretty much every class I took after my sophomore year needed the use of Excel in one shape or form. I took two numerical methods classes that were 80% Excel and VBA. And my Alma Mater now teaches Excel VBA instead of FORTRAN in intro to programming.

I also used it for processing lab data, etc. I just have no idea how you'd get out of engineering school without using Excel. Unless your university had no real lab work, no data processing and no in depth course projects.

We also used MATLAB, MathCAD, Maple, random other stuff.

 

[adamantine.me]

..... I want to get an exception made because this class is a joke, who should I talk to at college? I wouldn't mind taking it if they paid for it and it didn't force me to stay another semester to finish my degree.

The first year out of highschool I was forced to take an "Intro to computer applications and concepts" where I had to school the professor and show him how he was wrong for marking my answer wrong. And how what he was teaching wasn't right; he told me to prove it so I did on his projector in front of the entire class. Then I told him try it your way.

You guessed it, his way didn't work. Regardless I still didn't get my 2 points.

....... http://www.nvcc.edu/academic/coursecont/summaries/CSC110.pdf

There are bigger fish to fry than an instructor at a community college. Besides, you're probably well above an A- so 2 points probably didn't change anything, no?

 

[Jeff7]

Building spreadsheet models used to be part of the curriculum. Building finite difference models with a spreadsheet was kind of fun. One would turn off automatic recalculation (does the option even exist anymore?) and build the grid with lots and lots and lots of copying and pasting. After making sure all the equations were correctly entered, one would turn automatic recalculation back on and watch the spreadsheet have a double hernia.

I also had various assignments that required Excel.

Gear calculation was another one: You didn't need to use Excel for doing gear calculations on the homework, but you'd be absolutely nuts not to.
"Design a gear to transmit X horsepower at Y speed, with an outside diameter for the drive gear that is no more than 8" because it has to fit inside an existing enclosure."
"Now do that same thing for the next 3 iterations."
"Now use a bevel gear and repeat."


If you didn't have a spreadsheet for that, you'd do well to clear your schedule for a day or two.

Wanna run wit my crew, huh?
Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?
They call me the king of the spreadsheets
Got 'em all printed out on my bedsheets