If I had to come up with a single phrase to describe the myriad of spreadsheets and databases that I’ve encountered over the years it would be – ‘If it looks terrible, chances are that it is.’
I’ve been working with spreadsheets, databases and Visual Basic code for almost 25 years now. Over this time I’ve had to deal with countless examples created by my clients, prospective clients and other developers. To be honest I really can’t think of an example that doesn’t fit this phrase.
There are a number of really good reasons for keeping your work tidy and paying attention to how it looks, but here are just three of them;
1) When working with spreadsheets it’s far easier to spot inconsistencies or errors when everything is well laid out. This is especially true as the sheet grows in size or complexity. Spreadsheets can easily end up becoming such a tangled mess that it’s impossible to be certain that any of the numbers they generate are actually correct.
2) It is much easier to make changes if things were well structured in the first place. This is especially true if you have to return to something months or years after it was first created. For instance, spending time labelling controls might seem a chore but trying to work out what the button ‘Command78’ actually does 5 years down the line really IS as chore.
3) Other people will tend to judge your work on how it looks. If your spreadsheet or database is going to be used by anyone else, they will think far more highly of it if it looks good. If it looks like it’s going to be full of faults people will tend look for them.
When teaching VBA programming a while ago I was asked – ‘How do you know if the code that you’ve written is any good?’ I started answering by talking about testing, structure and efficiency but as I was talking I realised that it’s actually more about confidence. Obviously you need to write well- structured, efficient and tested code, but ultimately if you have confidence in it and feel good about it then it’s probably quite good. It’s much easier to feel confident about something that looks like it will work well than something that looks like it’s about to crash.