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Google Docs gets an API for task automation

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Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#171

Post by afandian »

skybrian wrote: post #164
afandian wrote: post #102

It terrifies me how entrenched the Google suite is becoming, and more 'open' APIs will surely further that position. It's the default for most community / cross org collaboration and note-taking in my line of work. A huge amount of stuff gets done in Google docs. And then Google ban your account for some random reason and you're suddenly barred from participating, your voice can no longer be heard, and who knows what…

A business running GSuite getting banned would indeed be a disaster, but has this ever happened? For personal accounts, what happens if you create another account? It's also a big disruption, but "your voice can no longer be heard" seems exaggerated?

In a recent HN thread [0] someone's account was literally guilty by association with no recourse. That process is a black box. Maybe they could blacklist an IP range. Who knows.

Let's say we're note-gathering at a conference about metadata formats for international science collaboration. Often we get remote participants who want to join the conversation, and selection bias says that they especially come from developing countries and can't afford to travel. Those constituencies may have vital information which will help to guide a standardization process for shared metadata.

If they are blocked, for whatever reason, they may be unable to contribute to the conversation. Maybe their missing voice means that metadata systems add another piece of systematic bias against them and further excludes them.

I don't know of any specific examples where this has happened, but the underpinnings are all true.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124324

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#172

Post by oblio »

rkangel wrote: post #169
oblio wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all intents and purposes, a byte should be 8 bits. Standardization is good. All those ancient systems should just die, at this point.

Then add a dollar to every microwave, washing machine, fridge, doorbell or other device with a hint of processing that uses a small embedded processor. Optimising transistor gate count for simplistic application is absolutely worth doing, even if you end up with an architecture that doesn't happen to be the same as expected by people who have only ever programmed for x86.

That's absolutely ridiculous. Don't tell me that if we really wanted to move 7 bit or whatever other wacky architectures to 8 bits, their price would go up by 1 dollar...

x86 is far from the only 1 byte = 8 bits architecture... PowerPC, SPARC, Itanium, ARM, MIPS, heck, I'm having a hard time remembering major non 8 bit-multiple architectures.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#173

Post by vb6lives »

nuclx wrote: post #162
legitster wrote: post #21

They will have a lot of catchup to do to get where Office is now. I'm frankly amazed by how good Microsoft Flow has been. So many dumb business processes rely on an Excel doc somewhere, or a stupid manual email somewhere else. But with Flow I've seen just a single smarty-pants able to fully streamline an entire department one rule at a time. They don't need to get permission to bring in a new logo - it's part of Offi…

Serious question: What exactly is the advantage of Microsoft Flow compared to a scripted solution (using python or - to stay within the Microsoft ecosystem - PowerShell)? What particular use-cases can it solve? E.g. is it easy to template Word/Excel document generation with it? Is it just that you don't have to write any code to use Flow?

It's a tool for motivated non-programmers to get things done.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#174

Post by rkangel »

oblio wrote: post #172
rkangel wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then add a dollar to every microwave, washing machine, fridge, doorbell or other device with a hint of processing that uses a small embedded processor. Optimising transistor gate count for simplistic application is absolutely worth doing, even if you end up with an architecture that doesn't happen to be the same as expected by people who have only ever programmed for x86.

That's absolutely ridiculous. Don't tell me that if we really wanted to move 7 bit or whatever other wacky architectures to 8 bits, their price would go up by 1 dollar... x86 is far from the only 1 byte = 8 bits architecture... PowerPC, SPARC, Itanium, ARM, MIPS, heck, I'm having a hard time remembering major non 8 bit-multiple architectures.

I was exaggerating a little for effect, but not dramatically so, once you take the multiplicative effect between BOM cost and price on the shelf.

To give you one example of a non-8 bit architecture, I used to work on CSR Bluetooth devices. For a while, the third most popular architecture was a little known thing called XAP, because it was in all of the 1-2 billion chips that CSR had made. XAP is a 16 bit processor in every way you can be a 16 bit processor: both the size of a byte (minimum addressable memory size) and the size of a word (size used for compilation) was 16 bit. You couldn't sub-address any larger types to serialise data. Also, the code space was separate from data space, and so function pointers were 24 bit (2 words). This meant that a lot of casting that developers take for granted wasn't possible (e.g. store a pointer in an int).

All of these choices meant that the XAP was very low gate count, and so very power and cost efficient for a surprisingly capable little processor.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#175

Post by jdeibele »

coldtea wrote: post #51
legitster wrote: post #21

They will have a lot of catchup to do to get where Office is now. I'm frankly amazed by how good Microsoft Flow has been. So many dumb business processes rely on an Excel doc somewhere, or a stupid manual email somewhere else. But with Flow I've seen just a single smarty-pants able to fully streamline an entire department one rule at a time. They don't need to get permission to bring in a new logo - it's part of Offi…

> They don't need to get permission to bring in a new logo - it's part of Office, they can just do it. And no one has to get dragged into it kicking and screaming - you want to work off of an Excel file? Fine! It's still there! Plus it wont be randomly cancelled when Google decides they got bored with it after several years of neglecting it first.

I used to say that there were two kinds of people: people helpers and problem solvers.

People helpers are good tech support: "I'm sure I can help you. I've done this a thousand times."

Problem solvers are not: "I'm going out of my mind. I've done this a thousand times!"

It's more complicated than that, with people falling somewhere on an X-Y graph, some skewing one way and some the other.

Also, I used to think that all the values were positive. But there are those who not only don't help, they make the situation worse. And those who can't solve the problem, but make that worse, too.

What would be nice is if Google were to have someone who scored more on the "people helper" part. "Yes, this is older and boring but it's what people are used to and we're going to maintain it."

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#177

Post by fjabre »

Google is ridiculous with its API restrictions and lackluster offerings. For a software company it astounds me how poor and mismanaged their API options are. Unreliable in the sense they pull the plug a lot with these pet projects leaving devs hanging. Can they be trusted?

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#178

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

jac_no_k wrote: post #117
cosmie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahahaha. I stumbled upon Flow last year when I switched jobs. Our IT/procurement process is ridiculous, so I scrounged around our intranet resources for licenses and tools that I had access to by default or could get/request access to without triggering the Eye of Sauron to gaze down upon me from the tower of IT Security. My team does analytics consulting work for large multi-agency marketing campaigns, and I used F…

/me is one of the minions from team "Eye of Sauron". However I'm not stuck in this tower. I'm torn between two worlds. One side applauds the grass roots based solutions and the JFDI attitude. The other side is concerned that these solutions becomes widely used, de facto production, and problems upstream ends up breaking the output. On error, hopefully fails loudly but subtle problems could creep in. If the reports ar…

> Ideally the IT department would take a step back, assess what the users (you the stakeholder) needs are, and provide the solutions.

This approach was taken with Lotus Notes. The ivory tower decided who could create and control a database. All it does is throw up bureaucratic barriers people will work around. How much of your company is dependent on bespoke Excel databases? What better tools can you empower the employees with to mitigate that risk?

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#179

Post by TheKarateKid »

northwest65 wrote: post #79
irrational wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they got bored with it I've always wondered why Google is so bad at keeping various services going. Your comment caused me to reflect that Google hires a lot of smart people. Smart people tend to get bored with working on the same thing and want to work on new shiny things. Could it be that the smart people at Google do a bang up job of creating new services, but then get bored and move on to something new, leaving…

>I've always wondered why Google is so bad at keeping various services going I'm starting to believe that it might be simply because low quality software is hard to maintain. They have some very complex software, but nothing of great quality. They might hire a lot of smart people, but not very many that are actually good at developing quality software. It appears that being smart doesn't make you diligent in your wor…

> They might hire a lot of smart people, but not very many that are actually good at developing quality software.

This. They seem to hire people who are excellent Computer Scientists, but that DOESN'T make you an excellent software engineer!

The result is what we often see from Google: A product with an impressive/complex algorithm (whether it be AI or efficiency) wrapped in terrible software prone to tons of bugs and breakage.

Re: Google Docs gets an API for task automation

#180

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #133
northwest65 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've always wondered why Google is so bad at keeping various services going I'm starting to believe that it might be simply because low quality software is hard to maintain. They have some very complex software, but nothing of great quality. They might hire a lot of smart people, but not very many that are actually good at developing quality software. It appears that being smart doesn't make you diligent in your wor…

> Want to reply in Gmail, you have to click the reply button twice for the reply pane to appear This doesn't happen to me, and a quick Google (ha) isn't turning up complaint posts about it. This might just be a you thing. Have you used Google maps? Or Google {search,photos}? I get the feeling that they have two very different grades of software they write, and the stuff written by the varsity is so good that it's inv…

I had to upgrade my two year old phone because GMaps was turning into a sluggish nightmare that wasn't usable on a non-retina display. Google has serious QC problems. Their varsity team still doesn't turn out best of class software.
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