I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
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I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
1–10 of 378 posts
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#2I always say that spreadsheets are the saas startups worst enemy, or opportunity. Oh wait, that was patio11:
https://mobile.twitter.com/patio11/status/655674551615942657
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#3I always say that spreadsheets are the saas startups worst enemy, or opportunity. Oh wait, that was patio11: https://mobile.twitter.com/patio11/status/655674551615942657
The tweet: "Every spreadsheet shared in a business is an angel announcing another SaaS app still needs to be built."
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#4A timely reminder that the current spreadsheet format is not the last word on how to manage data and simple programs.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#5I always say that spreadsheets are the saas startups worst enemy, or opportunity. Oh wait, that was patio11: https://mobile.twitter.com/patio11/status/655674551615942657
Huh, I have the exact opposite feeling. If a SaaS app can be boiled down to a specific spreadsheet + web UI bolted on top, it's making money by wasting everyone's time.
Maybe I should get back to Twitter.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#6This is exactly why we're building https://glideapps.com!
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#7The sheer number of everyday business use cases that can be solved quickly and efficiently with spreadsheets is pretty astounding. Of course, there comes a point when heavily-used spreadsheets become intricate behemoths on which core business functions are run, and then things can get bad in a hurry. The challenge many programmers face is thinking that every business problem is best solved with code, when in reality the majority are solved faster, more efficiently, and more maintainably with a spreadsheet. Then the rest are worth developing "real" solutions for.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#8I feel the same way about Access, too. It doesn't matter whether they're "real programming", it matters that they let real people solve real world problems for themselves, who otherwise would have to pay real programmers real money to develop real applications.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#9One other thing in defense of spreadsheets is that they are a tremendous introduction to data manipulation and management for people who don’t think of themselves as being ‘programmers’. Purpose built SaaS apps pre-solve problems, and that can be great, but spreadsheets allow users to become owners and there is a lot of growing that can start from that place.
Re: I was wrong about spreadsheets (2017)
#10I love spreadsheets. When I'm working out a method for analyzing some dataset, I just hack it out in Calc. Or if it gets too big, Excel. Once I've blocked it out, I move to MySQL. But I can do any database operation in Excel, or even Calc. Maybe not efficiently, but well enough.
But I've also learned that basic Linux tools (grep, sed, tr, awk, sort, uniq, etc) are far more efficient for cleaning and preparing data for spreadsheets or databases.
And then I use spreadsheets for final analytic steps, stuff that SQL doesn't do efficiently, and for charting. I could learn Python and R, I suppose, but SQL and Calc/Excel have always been enough. And Gumeric, sometimes, because it can do some amazing charts that the others don't.