Process cocked-up due to Excel

The more I read about the part that Microsoft Excel played in the recent loss of nearly 16,000 Covid-19 test results from the UK’s contact tracing system, the more I’m facepalming.

But one expert suggested that even a high-school computing student would know that better alternatives exist.

“Excel was always meant for people mucking around with a bunch of data for their small company to see what it looked like,” commented Prof Jon Crowcroft from the University of Cambridge.

“And then when you need to do something more serious, you build something bespoke that works – there’s dozens of other things you could do.

“But you wouldn’t use XLS. Nobody would start with that.”