It's interesting to note that one of the people behind this work is Simon Peyton Jones, known (among other things) for creating haskell and being the lead developer of the GHC.
GHC = Glasgow Haskell Compiler.
Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets
51–60 of 129 posts
Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets
#52This is pretty neat. Tangentially, does anyone have a good way of version controlling excel files? I deal with people in the finance domain all the time, and for some files that come across my desk, it's terrifying to see multi-million dollar decisions being made in a file where anyone could change anything and not know any better.
Excel in office 365 cloud allows multiple users to edit the file at the same time, autosave and version control.
Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets
#53This is awesome (let expressions in formulas!!), but Mesh Spreadsheets has offered most of this for a couple of years, and in a free, open-source form. Specifically: - arrays and objects living in a cell - mix of spreadsheet and textual views - functions in spreadsheet cells, and running spreadsheets as a messaging service (as a lambda function / API) - dynamic array sizes We deliver this by offering a grid view of (…
I had never heard of Mesh before. It looks very cool. I wonder if the concept would work well on mobile devices (unfortunately the editor itself doesn’t, as it stands now).
Thanks! Yeah, marketing has been limited as I want to improve the error experience first.
To be honest, mobile is not a focus as I think it's hard to be productive without a proper keyboard. I'd like to make the iPad + kb experience better in the long-term though.
Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Banks, insurers, accountants; I know a company with 100M euro rev per year that runs entirely on Excel with VBA. Their office car park gate is opened, closed and managed with Excel. It sounds crazy but the CTO is a cofounder and he found it is much cheaper to just do everthing that way. They have been running like that for over 20 years.
One possibility is this - the people who mess with Excel VBA are generally very smart folk who just never went too techy, but then got really good at Excel and just learned vba as the next logical step. That means the code might not be kosher but it will be thoughtfully written and encompassing all the practical use cases. Contrast that with a 20something can grad who while competent isn't as smart as that non tech g…
I challenge you to make changes to a spreadsheet or VBA program that isn't using modern programming methods like unit testing and version control.
They would turn into a huge mess unless the coder is very diligent and understand every part.
CS 'indoctrination' is not a failure of education. Surgeons have been 'indoctrinated' to know pre-op procedures.
Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets
#55The ideal spreadsheet should be a mix of Excel, Geogebra, reactive Jupyter Notebook (like ObservableHQ or Vue.js computed properties), programmable in Python, C#, JavaScript and/or other languages with the ability to embed third-party widgets like maps or custom charts. And decent data connectors with SQL-like query syntax (including JOINs).
Hi — that’s what we’re working on! Retool ( https://tryretool.com ) is similar to Excel, except the cells are themselves React components. And you can refer to other components inside the props for each component. You can pull in data either via SQL, APIs, or any other data source we support. Everything inside Retool is also JavaScript, so it’s pretty hackable. If you’ve got any feedback, please let me know! I’m davi…
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Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Banks, insurers, accountants; I know a company with 100M euro rev per year that runs entirely on Excel with VBA. Their office car park gate is opened, closed and managed with Excel. It sounds crazy but the CTO is a cofounder and he found it is much cheaper to just do everthing that way. They have been running like that for over 20 years.
One possibility is this - the people who mess with Excel VBA are generally very smart folk who just never went too techy, but then got really good at Excel and just learned vba as the next logical step. That means the code might not be kosher but it will be thoughtfully written and encompassing all the practical use cases. Contrast that with a 20something can grad who while competent isn't as smart as that non tech g…
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Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think software is often more complicated then it needs to be. I used to write a lot of vbScript, but now I use Node/JavaScript whenever I need to glue something together. And there are many modules in Node.JS that you can glue together in order to do something useful. I find it even easier then vbScript/Excel/VBA!
I am (as a matter of principle) only working on projects which need to run for 10+ years or cannot be upgraded (firmware for very constrained devices) so yes, software is often far more complicated than it needs to be, but writing it in VBA or JS is not helping imho. Carefully designing, typing and formally proving (parts) is what makes me have applications running on cheap servers with basically 10+ years uptime (be…
Managing complexity is not so much about the language, it's more about software development process. But I think it helps to use a safe and simple language. Engineers often forget about their own cost.
Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets
#58A simple scripting language, like LabView’s C subset, that could take arguments out of cells, and write to cells, would be welcome. VBA has too much gobbledegook for a user like me. Python could also be embedded.
Excel support JS these days https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/excel/ex...
mostly useless as if you do anything, the undo queue gets cleared.
Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think software is often more complicated then it needs to be. I used to write a lot of vbScript, but now I use Node/JavaScript whenever I need to glue something together. And there are many modules in Node.JS that you can glue together in order to do something useful. I find it even easier then vbScript/Excel/VBA!
I am (as a matter of principle) only working on projects which need to run for 10+ years or cannot be upgraded (firmware for very constrained devices) so yes, software is often far more complicated than it needs to be, but writing it in VBA or JS is not helping imho. Carefully designing, typing and formally proving (parts) is what makes me have applications running on cheap servers with basically 10+ years uptime (be…
I'm fascinated. What sort of software needs to run with ten years uptime? How do you avoid downtime for operating system updates on those cheap servers?
Re: Applying programming language research ideas to transform spreadsheets
#60I rarely use Excel nowadays, but if I could choose one thing to improve it would be to let me use the English names for functions. Excel is localized to my language, and that includes function names. That probably made sense when targeting non technical people 30 years ago, but it makes it harder to search online and is non intuitive when you're used to other programming languages.