OceanGate’s ill-fated Titan sub relied on a hand-typed Excel spreadsheet
“This is an idiotic way to do navigation.”
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Jesus Christ that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The submarine in the game Iron Lung was safer to drive than this thing.
But Wilby said that for the Titan, the coordinate data was transcribed into a notebook by hand and then entered into Excel before loading the spreadsheet into mapping software to track the sub’s position on a hand-drawn map of the wreckage.
The OceanGate team tried to perform these updates at least every five minutes, but it was a slow, manual process done while communicating with the gamepad-controlled sub via short text messages.
Updates every FIVE MINUTES?! I wouldn't even trust this thing in a damn swimming pool.
I really do wonder why they ended up in this. It can' be that hard to make even a hacky DIY system to do it automatically. The navigation system just had to have some digital or even analog output, then it would be just the problem of interpreting the signal with some script and writing it into a file.
When Wilby recommended the company use standard software to process ping data and plot the sub’s telemetry automatically, the response was that the company wanted to develop an in-house system, but didn’t have enough time.
To write a script, you need someone who can write scripts.
If all you have is someone who can write VLOOKUPs in Excel, and the CEO is too cheap to hire someone, then that's what you use.
So basically it's a project done by MBA geniuses, entrepreneurs and visionaries who optimized by cutting on those mundane and boring nautical engineers and software developers?
God, do I like how evolution works.
someone who can write VLOOKUPs
I think you're overestimating the competence on display here...
Sounds like they did the lookups by hand actually
I really do wonder why they ended up in this. It can’ be that hard to make even a hacky DIY system to do it automatically.
All-manager team, no devs?
That’s why they use, what they know: Excel. I wonder if the UI was done in PowerPoint?
Nah, FrontPage.
It's exactly like Fallout lol
I like how the company didn't consider using standard software to do it, and then switch to the in-house system that they made later, instead of just having it done by hand instead.
There are better ways to do that even in Excel!
Right? I work with plenty of users in non-technical roles who have at best rudimentary Excel skills, and even they could figure out a better way to manage this. The whole thing with Excel is to make basic data work accessible even to a rube, and let them do an incredible amount of things otherwise outside their skillet.
Using Excel like this is like giving someone a microwave and they only use it as a kitchen timer.
What's worse is that half the coordinates probably ended up as dates...
Or comma separated values...F, that,,
Man if it wasn't for that kid that was probably dragged into this, I'd be fucking rolling rn. How fucking stupid do you have to be to not see the sea of red flags???
