You know how some people, having mastered a particular software tool, keep trying to fit every task into the one tool they know even when it’s awkward to do? I’ve seen people using Microsoft Excel instead of Microsoft Word or another word processor to produce letters — and people using Word to do spreadsheet-like tasks. The old adage seems to still apply in the software world: when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
It’s apparently not just small companies that suffer from this sort of problem:
The London 2012 Olympics is set be a humanoid spectacle of the like never witnessed by the world’s population before. Or something. But disturbing information has reached us at Vulture Central that reveals the organisation’s entire cultural events database is stored in *gasp* Excel.
A job vacancy currently advertised on the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) website is offering a competitive salary to someone who can maintain and report on data held in Microsoft’s spreadsheet software.
Now, a small biz with few customer accounts might consider Excel to be fit for purpose. But surely housing an Olympic stadium-sized database on a standalone spreadsheet is bonkers, isn’t it?
That’s a mighty big nail for such a small hammer.
