Re: The problem with not owning the software

On 12/29/24 11:52 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Sun, 29 Dec 2024 19:08:00 -0500, -hh wrote:
 

I have a colleague who's done some amazing stuff in Excel using Visual
Basic Script (VBS); the PC I had at the time would fail just trying to
load the files; his beefy machine he had would take literally hours to
crunch through a set.  A quick search shows that I still have an older
copy: it takes up 14.34GB on disk. Youch.

 How much data was involved, really? I suspect a more sensible app would
deal with the same data much more efficiently and easily.

There was a pretty modest chunk of data ... maybe just 1000 unique data points?
What made it large & computationally intensive was that the dataset was routed iteratively through a ~dozen different "Monte Carlo" statistical exercises and filters to identify & glean signal from noise.
He has expressed that he should rewrite it in {some flavor of C}, but there were reasons why it originated in Excel:  it was a personal spin-off from the original application which was a work project, and that (smaller) model ended up going through a M&S for ~10 million design permutations.
-hh