I see so many freaking excel sheets where a database should have been used that I wouldn't be surprised if, at the veeeeery bottom of all things, the entire global financial system runs based on a single excel sheet made by a dude in the 90s. And since then poorly maintained.

It's funny, you think it's a spreadsheet.

I've seen it... It's not a spreadsheet.

It's a fortran multidimensional array created in 1968. Tom, the engineer who designed it, died in 2005 at the ripe age of 82.

There's nobody alive today that can maintain it and western society is living on borrowed time until the tape it's running on snaps.

A friend works at a major veteran's hospital and all it's records for managing patient scheduling/billing/budgeting is in an Excel spreadsheet on a shared network drive. He said there is a system they use to keep the regulators happy, then there is the 'real' system they use every day.

Don't freak out too much, it's not individual patients, just the overall 'stuff' they keep track of.

I said:

Me: "Since it's shared, how often does the sheet get corrupted?"

Him: "All the time, but it's better than the regulatory mess we're forced to use."

Me: "What happens if they find out?"

Him: "Who is they? We answer directly to Congress and the auditors only care that we update their system. Its been 6 years since an auditor set foot in this building and the network is so convoluted, they'd never find the sheet."

@PaperTrail ahhh government regulations hard at work.

I see nothing changed while I was out.

The system isn't broken, it's working exactly how it was designed.

Congress gets the money, the VA gets a fraction, the auditors get paid, and the veterans get nothing.

@sariel > "the veterans get nothing"

I don't know, he's in charge of the travel reimbursements and it's his job to max out the budget no matter what. He calls vets almost every day trying to get them to come in for their scheduled appointments. The farther away they are, the better. Can't drive? No problem, private shuttle service is called (and those ain't cheap).

@PaperTrail I won't get into the politics and personal losses that I have experienced with the VA but that's a real good example of how shit the VA is.

The travel budget is $2 million a year to get patients to the facility, but the budget for actual healthcare is $500k a year.

The VA isn't where veterans with serious illness go for care. It's where veterans with serious illness go to die.

@sariel > "budget for actual healthcare is $500k a year"

It is easy to poke fun because the obscurity is so transparent. It's not like the VA tries to hide anything.

My father-in-law has received new, state-of-the-art, 'so expensive no private insurance will touch it' hearing aids every couple of years. Why? Because the VA doc performs the exam, says 'you need new hearing aids', and he gets them. Anything wrong with the 'old' ones? Nope.

@PaperTrail yet my grandfather couldn't get the lifesaving surgery he needed because his cardiologist didn't think he needed it.

The VA sucks and there's 200,000+ homeless victims to prove it.

@sariel nah, it's probably a huge stack of punchcards and an enigma hacked to run doom (to keep the sysadmin amused).

@tosensei in another lifetime we used quake multiplayer to stress-test networks, so you're not that far off from the truth.

Very close - knew a large company that used MS Access because they could maintain it themselves.

@jsonboa I used to work for a trading firm where a guy lost 200 grand on a trade cos the sheet was in manual calc mode. There are a multitude of stories like this but I witnessed this particular debacle. I have a soft spot for Excel but office 365 ruined the glorious 2007..the dev bellends just couldn’t leave it alone