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Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

subset.so

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Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#41

Post by MuffinFlavored »

narush wrote: post #33

Thanks for posting! I love the topic - I've written before [1] about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. I personally think that the evolution of spreadsheets is less about changing the UI, and instead making it possible for spreadsheet users to easily transition to more powerful programming tools in a natural and easy way. So I've spent the past…

I might have missed the point but the Mito demo just shows importing a CSV file into a common table/grid of cells? Seems like a semi-shamless plug that 100% avoids the topic of the post: is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#42

Post by chx »

Tangential note.

> But the data isn’t persistent enough, we only get recent commands, and the location is always moving and we can’t easily reference older calculations.

You need a better shell, my friend. To quote my .zshrc

HISTSIZE=100000

SAVEHIST=100000

setopt inc_append_history share_history HIST_IGNORE_DUPS

bindkey '^R' history-incremental-pattern-search-backward

The results?

wc -l ~/.zsh_history

55576 /home/chx/.zsh_history

and I can pattern search it.

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#43

Post by nealabq »

dragonwriter wrote: post #38

For almost all tasks, yes. But it differs a lot by task. The power of the spreadsheet model is that it is minimally acceptable for a wide array of tasks, not that it is usually optimal.

And it is a good way to deal with lots of numbers, adding and averaging them, looking for patterns and presenting TL;DRs.

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#44

Post by davidbarker »

I scanned the comments to see if anyone had mentioned Causal[1] yet. I’d describe it as a spreadsheet specifically for modelling.

I used it to build a cost model for the startup I work at, consisting of around 100 different inputs, and it was rather enjoyable.

I was able to (reasonably easily) insert the different AWS costs for (for example) SD vs. HD video transcoding and see how that affected the costs of encoding and storing video 12 months from now.

[1] https://www.causal.app/

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#45

Post by flakiness »

I guess some Excel users just outgrow the app. It's time to write some code in R or Python, along side with Jupyter-like notebooks. Another option is to use more specialized tools like Tableau.

The table or spread sheet is not very "visual" after all.

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#47

Post by mromanuk »

narush wrote: post #33

Thanks for posting! I love the topic - I've written before [1] about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. I personally think that the evolution of spreadsheets is less about changing the UI, and instead making it possible for spreadsheet users to easily transition to more powerful programming tools in a natural and easy way. So I've spent the past…

> I personally think that the evolution of spreadsheets is less about changing the UI, and instead making it possible for spreadsheet users to easily transition to more powerful programming tools in a natural and easy way. So I've spent the past 2 years building Mito [2].

Following the article idea of spreadsheet as the best paradigm, why you think users should abandon it in favor of other?

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#48

Post by thom »

maliker wrote: post #8

I liked the way Apple did it in their Numbers clone of Excel - you can have multiple grids on a single page. It makes it a lot easier to have related data on the same page without fiddling with the row/column sizes to suite multiple types of data.

Yep, loved using this for D&D character sheets. :)

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#49

Post by narush »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #41
narush wrote: post #33

Thanks for posting! I love the topic - I've written before [1] about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. I personally think that the evolution of spreadsheets is less about changing the UI, and instead making it possible for spreadsheet users to easily transition to more powerful programming tools in a natural and easy way. So I've spent the past…

I might have missed the point but the Mito demo just shows importing a CSV file into a common table/grid of cells? Seems like a semi-shamless plug that 100% avoids the topic of the post: is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

The question of "what is a better visual data model than VisiCalc" is just one of the questions we can ask ourselves about how to create Excel 2.0. In the authors original post, they point out that Notion and Coda answer this question not with an evaluation on "cells" and the data model, but rather by extending the model to include a word processor. This isn't a purely visual change, but a functionality/integration one.

There are a bunch of different angles to consider the evolution of a spreadsheet, and, as I say in my response above, I personally think focuses on changes to the UI/display of data miss the point: what's missing in Excel 1.0 isn't a better display of data - IMO, it's giving the modern, powerful analysis tools that us programmers have access to the beginner-end of the programmer spectrum!

Different spreadsheet startups certainly have different theses on this. Subset [1] (the OP) seems to focus on side-by-side grids on an infinite canvas. Monday [2] (also referenced by OP) seems to focus on different "views" for a spreadsheet for project tracking, etc. Mito focuses on allowing you to integrate Python and spreadsheets as easily as possible. Clay [3] seems to focus on spreadsheet integrations into APIs/other data.

(Disclaimer: all the above are just my understandings of these tools, but I haven't used most of them directly mostly am just going of marketing materials... I highly recommend you check them out, though - they all look quite cool!)

My post def was a plug for Mito - I'll try and make my response to the post/thesis more clearly delineated in the future. I think this post is an awesome chance to get feedback on our spreadsheet thesis (and potentially hear back from OP on this thoughts!).

Rock on, spreadsheets :-)

[1] https://subset.so

[2] https://monday.com

[3] https://www.clay.run

Re: Excel 2.0 – Is there a better visual data model than a grid of cells?

#50

Post by eatsyourtacos »

olav wrote: post #20

Excel is seriously killing humanity. No version control, no debugging, brittle support for automation. Excel, to me, is the single most obvious sign that we must get rid of the giant tech monopolies to re-enable innovation in software.

>No version control

Umm, put your excel file in git repo if you really need to? That's like saying C++ doesn't have version control.

>no debugging

Debug what exactly? If you have vb scripts, then yes you can debug. If you just have formulas.. there is literally nothing to debug.

>brittle support for automation

Ok, but that's also kind of the point. Excel should not be some insane thing where people do way too much. It's a spreadsheet with formulas- and that is what it's goal is. People who use excel with thousands of lines of VB code should literally be using something else 99% of the time.

>Excel, to me, is the single most obvious sign that we must get rid of the giant tech monopolies to re-enable innovation in software.

There is basically nothing to "innovate" related to excel. It's exactly what is needed. If you want to innovate then write your own damn spreadsheet that does some new magic you think of.

Why are you trying to overcomplicate a simple 2d spreadsheet?

>Excel is seriously killing humanity

Excel is doing the exact opposite. You are a fool saying that- excel is so freaking simple yet so powerful. Sounds like you might live in academic lala land and have never worked at a business where there are a billion different types of things to do and simple spreadsheets can generally cover most cases.

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