We all know the best practices. Write clean code. Use libraries. Document everything. But here’s the thing: in the real world, things are messy — and I’m no exception. So today, let’s talk about my data engineering sins. Not as a confession, but as a mirror. Because chances
Even the Library of Congress agrees: boring formats win in the long run. In our daily data work, we often treat the data we get as throwaway material. We read it, interpret it, combine it with other data, and finally reach our desired result. Then we toss the intermediate data
Numbers are easy for computers — that’s what we’ve been told. But try storing 9007199254740993 in Excel and you’ll get… a different number. What’s going on? The invisible conversion When I wrote the first version of my CSV editor Tablecruncher, one of my non-negotiables was: Don'
How do you know if two names refer to the same person? That’s the question behind a new EU regulation that will soon require European banks to warn customers during money transfers if the payee’s name doesn’t match the account holder. It’s meant to prevent fraud
Some years ago, I consulted for a company with recurring website issues — broken features, slow performance, inconsistent analytics. After a bit of digging, the root cause became clear: they had layered so many user tracking systems into their site that it had become fragile and unreliable. When I asked why
This is issue #007 of The Missing Header Data problems don’t just happen in IT departments. Even in civil engineering, interpreting data correctly is crucial — and mistakes can cause enormous trouble. In 2003, a bridge called Hochrheinbrücke, connecting Germany and Switzerland across the river Rhine, was built. The project
This is issue #006 of The Missing Header Did you ever get an email with a sentence like: We meet at the café" You probably guessed the sender meant a coffeehouse. But where's this letter garbage coming from? This is a classic symptom of broken character encoding.
This is issue #005 of The Missing Header About a year ago, I asked the AI search engine Perplexity a simple question: “How many otters live in Europe?” The answer? 350. Now, the European otter is endangered in some regions — but not that endangered. There are far more than just
This is issue #004 ofThe Missing Header — formerly known as the Tablecruncher Newsletter* Recently, I got a CSV file with column names like state, amount, and the ever-popular date. Even after looking at the content for a while, their meaning wasn’t obvious. What kind of “date” are we talking
This is already issue #003 ofThe Missing Header — formerly known as the Tablecruncher Newsletter* Opening a CSV file in Excel feels easy. You double-click, it loads, and voilà — your data. Or so you think. But what actually happens under the hood can quietly corrupt your data without you ever noticing.
Welcome to issue #002 of The Missing Header — formerly known as the Tablecruncher Newsletter* A user emailed me, rather frustrated. They had a CSV full of customer data — and a clear goal: get rid of duplicates. They opened it in Excel, clicked Remove Duplicates, and… nothing happened. Why? Because every
Hey there – and welcome to the very first issue of The Missing Header! Formerly known as the Tablecruncher Newsletter, I’ve rebranded it to avoid confusion with the software project. Same author, same scope — still all about solving messy data problems. I’m really glad you’re here. We’ll