Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Hobbyists and the UK government.

They somehow cooked up a spreadsheet that make them hit the limits much earlier.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988.amp




This was a massively outdated version of the software - it’s not entirely surprising that if you use c10-year old software there are more limits.

Excel has grown hugely since then.



Of course there are still limits, the article was talking about the 2003 limit of 64k lines which has now been increased to 1m.

You can’t exceed these limits without being heavily alerted/warned by the application too.

Every spreadsheet application and database has these sort of limits anyway, eg:

* Google Sheets limits total cells, although can only handle a tiny fraction of what excel can.

* Postgres limits columns to 1600 (much less than excel)

* Mongo limits document size


That’s completely alarming and much worse.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: