I agree with CLR - the really important thing is that they understand what
they've done and be able to make alterations to it that work when maintenance
or extension of features is required.

What you are discussing is a matter of both knowledge of the language and
style.

As the people who "misuse" the language get more familiar with it and see
other functions or code implemented they will learn 'cleaner' ways of doing
things.

But for someone trying to be self-sufficient, having something that works
and that they can maintain is much more important than whether they did it in
great style or not. But that's just my opinion, and like coding styles, we
each have our own.

" wrote:

"CLR" wrote:
All you say is true, "but", the important thing IMHO is that
the person be able to come up with a solution/formula that
THEY can understand.

I disagree. Anyone who uses a function called "SUM" to do an
operation other than addition does not understand squat! At
least some people do something like SUM(A1+B1), which is not
quite so nonsensical.

Actually, in most cases, the (mis)user of SUM() did not sound
like an native English speaker. So the use of "SUM" might be
irrelevant to the (mis)user. They might think of "SUM" as
"compute ...".

But that really wasn't the crux of my question. I want to know
why so many people misuse SUM() in this way. I suspect that
someone (or some text) is misleading these people. If it is a
text, wouldn't it be nice to track down the publisher and let them
know that the author is .... (Expletives deleted.)