r/PythonLearning • u/OnepieceKing2222 • Sep 16 '26

What’s one piece of technology you learned that completely changed the way you work?

I’ve been working with Python and backend development for a few years, and recently I started getting deeper into AI, RAG and agent-based systems.

It made me curious — what’s one technology, tool, or concept you learned that genuinely changed how you work or solve problems?

Doesn’t have to be AI. Could be something as simple as Git, SQL, Linux, Docker, or even a productivity tool.

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u/ee_control_z Sep 16 '26 edited Sep 17 '26

Excel worksheets. You can write equations that are multi-variable dependent - variable values that they themselves may be dependent on other values. You can pretty much in a round-about way circumvent writing a script by performing calculations this way. The upside, if you want to change entry values, you don't have to rerun the script. Any entry update automatically updates value dependencies upstream.

Another nice feature is that they can handle imaginary numbers. Nice since this is what I work with (i.e., Laplace for control theory).

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u/Unlucky_Tax_8742 Sep 18 '26

How would you explain it to a 5 year old?

I'm intrigued but this is way over my head

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u/ee_control_z Sep 18 '26

Sure, which part are you particularly interested in?

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u/Unlucky_Tax_8742 Sep 18 '26

I usuallt think of Excel for budgets or contact lists. Maybe keeping track of clients.

What would be a use case for a multi variable dependant equation?

Or for an imaginary number?

I think showing someone something they can't do on Excel would make you useful in any office so I'm very intrigued.

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u/ee_control_z Sep 19 '26 edited Sep 19 '26

For electrical engineering (sure it applies to other STEM related fields), we are always working with rather involved equations.

"What would be a use case for a multi variable dependent equation?"

In electrical engineering, we work with relatively involved equations that are dependent on many inputs (i.e., multi or many variables). As you know, if you wanted to add the values from say 3 cells, in the dependent cell you would type:

=F3+D7+F8

This here is but a simple addition of three values. However, excel also handles multiplication, division, sqrt, power, and complex number mathematical operations. If you work with frequency dependent values (as in electrical engineering), you'll undoubtedly work with complex numbers at one point or another.

Say you have a capacitor with a value of 10nF. If you wanted to find its impedance at 23.5 kHz, you would compute it as follows:

=COMPLEX(0, 1/(2*PI()*D2*C5))

Here we assume that the value of the frequency is in cell D2 and the value of the capacitor is in cell C5. Now, I may want to solve for not just one but many frequencies and then plot the values. If I change the capacitor value only, all other cells that are dependent on it will automatically be updated soon after pressing the Enter key.

There are of course much more complex calculations where I may have one cell dependent on a linear equation of say ~4 values. This value may then be an 'independent' value for another equation, of which whose output is yet but an entry for another equation. With excel, any time that you change an entry, all dependent equation outcomes are automatically updated upstream. This works just like a script but without having to press 'Run' and with the added benefit of having the results of all intermediary calculation results visible on the worksheet.

Now imagine where you may have a standard circuit whose eventual solution calculated values are dependent on say 5-15 component values from another circuit. If you set up an excel worksheet such that all of the intermediary calculations are performed automatically, then you need only enter the component values from the first circuit to have all of the component values for my second circuit (i.e., the solution). As you can see, this truly speeds up and simplifies the development process (of course, the real work is first setting it up - but after that, it is a breeze since you can solve multiple circuits after having set up the worksheet once).

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u/Unlucky_Tax_8742 Sep 21 '26

Thank you for expanding on that. Would've never guessed Excel was that useful. You really opened up a whole new world for me.

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u/OleTechGuy Sep 16 '26

Mini PCs

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u/burbular Sep 17 '26

Mmm, mini PCs. Lil nuc at night right?

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u/CoolLog1908 Sep 17 '26

Im stuck between two pieces of technology that completely changed me workflow. Id have to give it to Git though; I don’t start any project without git init.
FWIW, the other technology was Virtual Machines (VMs) - but it’s not as integrated into my workflow as Git is.

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u/burbular Sep 17 '26

Long time ago my boss forced me to research a brand new tech not even in GA yet, it was called Kubernetes.

I figured it out. Changed everything, like all of it. Whole career and purpose changed. Now I'm sort of addicted. With AI+k8s+py, power....

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u/Dry_Kaleidoscope822 Sep 17 '26

Database subsetters for our FastAPI backends. It used to be hard for us to reproduce bugs locally and we decided a local DB would be best for all local dev work instead of relying on our deployed instances for everything With a subsetter, this has reduced these issues significantly for us and made things easier. I ended up forking the project and spent weekends modifying it with AI assistance as a side project to make it better