right tool for the job

[Bob <bob statland org>]

A number of recent posts feel to me like consequences of not choosing
the right tool for the job.  I see a spreadsheet as a simple tool for
easily solving simple problems of a type anticipated by the
spreadsheet programmer -- mainly small business accounting.  If you
want to do serious stats, you need a stats package.  (Actually, though
gnumeric is better at stats than its competitors, I would say if you
want to do ANY stats. you need a stats package;-) If you want to mess
with humongous matrices you might need a linear algebra program such
as Octave (though many tools could probably access the same data
structure as both A and the transpose of A just by manipulating it by
rows instead of columns -- there is no need for redundant storage).
If you want to slice and dice output the Unix command line is heaven.
If you want no rounding error you need to use binary coded decimal.
Trying to make gnumeric be all things to all people is the best way to
turn it into bloatware.

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