Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
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Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
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Re: Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
#2Founder here :)
While working at Google years ago, I co-founded a nonprofit for math enrichment classes. I ran it in my spare time, using Google Sheets, until the spreadsheet setup grew too unwieldy, time-consuming, and frustrating. Back then, I bit the bullet, and rebuilt it using Django. It took months of my evenings and weekends — just to recreate a database version of what I almost had with a spreadsheet.
That got me thinking what made spreadsheets my tool of choice to start with, and what made me switch to a database, and if we can have the best of both worlds. So we built Grist to be a “relational spreadsheet” — most of what a spreadsheet has, but with more structure, linking between records, and a flexible UI on top.
I’ve been using Grist daily, it’s now my tool of choice. I’d love to know what uses you put it to as well!
Re: Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
#3Founder here :) While working at Google years ago, I co-founded a nonprofit for math enrichment classes. I ran it in my spare time, using Google Sheets, until the spreadsheet setup grew too unwieldy, time-consuming, and frustrating. Back then, I bit the bullet, and rebuilt it using Django. It took months of my evenings and weekends — just to recreate a database version of what I almost had with a spreadsheet. That go…
cto here - I signed up to work on Grist because I like the UI, like it as a spreadsheet format, and think it has potential for decent version control - something lacking in data projects, and that I've been interested in for way too long - here I am ranting in 2013 https://okfnlabs.org/blog/2013/08/08/diffing-and-patching-da...
Re: Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
#4Founder here :) While working at Google years ago, I co-founded a nonprofit for math enrichment classes. I ran it in my spare time, using Google Sheets, until the spreadsheet setup grew too unwieldy, time-consuming, and frustrating. Back then, I bit the bullet, and rebuilt it using Django. It took months of my evenings and weekends — just to recreate a database version of what I almost had with a spreadsheet. That go…
Paul, Dmitry, thanks for the link, the idea of an SQLite-backed spreadsheet with Python for computations looks quite enticing.
Right now, the spreadsheet is unworkable (formulas are updating where I don't want them to, visual editing glitches), hope you iron out the bugs.
Re: Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
#5Founder here :) While working at Google years ago, I co-founded a nonprofit for math enrichment classes. I ran it in my spare time, using Google Sheets, until the spreadsheet setup grew too unwieldy, time-consuming, and frustrating. Back then, I bit the bullet, and rebuilt it using Django. It took months of my evenings and weekends — just to recreate a database version of what I almost had with a spreadsheet. That go…
Paul, Dmitry, thanks for the link, the idea of an SQLite-backed spreadsheet with Python for computations looks quite enticing. Right now, the spreadsheet is unworkable (formulas are updating where I don't want them to, visual editing glitches), hope you iron out the bugs.
For formulas: could it be that Grist formulas are per-column rather than per-cell? This can take a little getting used to, but we think it leads to neater spreadsheets, and there are other features that can take up the slack that mixed-content columns used to (like multiple views within a page/tab). Sorry you hit editing glitches - thanks for letting us know, and if you have the time I'd like to hear more here or via the "give feedback" button in the app. Cheers!
Re: Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paul, Dmitry, thanks for the link, the idea of an SQLite-backed spreadsheet with Python for computations looks quite enticing. Right now, the spreadsheet is unworkable (formulas are updating where I don't want them to, visual editing glitches), hope you iron out the bugs.
For formulas: could it be that Grist formulas are per-column rather than per-cell? This can take a little getting used to, but we think it leads to neater spreadsheets, and there are other features that can take up the slack that mixed-content columns used to (like multiple views within a page/tab). Sorry you hit editing glitches - thanks for letting us know, and if you have the time I'd like to hear more here or via…
Ah, this explains a lot, sorry for the confusion. It's an uphill battle to make folks drop their ingrained Excel habits, though.
Re: Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
#7What made you decide to go open source?
Re: Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
#8>> Grist tables are literally SQLite tables.
So whenever a new form/table is created, is it getting stored within a sqlite table on your backend ?
Re: Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
#9What made you decide to go open source?
It was a combination of the value to others we could liberate by doing that, and the value it would bring to us. As Grist took shape, it felt like a nice self-contained tool (and format) that could be useful at many points in a data pipeline, given its editing, visualization, and summarization functions. And spreadsheets have a long tail of features users want, so it makes sense to open it up to collaborative development, especially given how tech-savvy our users can be.
Re: Show HN: Grist, a Hacker Friendly Spreadsheet
#10>> Grist tables are literally SQLite tables. So whenever a new form/table is created, is it getting stored within a sqlite table on your backend ?
Yes, a new table in your spreadsheet is stored as a new sqlite table, plus some metadata about it in some other administrative tables. You get all of this as a standalone, round-trippable file when you download your spreadsheet.