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

I find https://ellx.io/ very interesting, after chatting with its creator on HN a while ago in another next-gen spreadsheets discussion.

At first glance, it's just a web-native spreadsheet where formulas and macros are both JavaScript instead of Excel formulas and VBA. However, it's clever in doing some introspection and automatic functional-reactive lifting in cases where inputs to the formulas are external time-varying inputs. You write something that looks like regular JavaScript, but if one or more of your inputs is actually a time-varying function, then the result is a time-varying function that looks like a regular JavaScript variable but is automatically updated whenever its dependencies change. So you get something like the automatic updating semantics of Excel expressions, which is very different from the semantics of regular JavaScript variables.

I seem to also remember some clever introspection abilities on those time-varying functions, but it's been a while. In any case, it's obvious the creator has thought long and hard about how web-native spreadsheets should behave.

It's also interesting in that you can either explicitly name the cell's result using var_name = expression or else just have a bare expression, in which case an implicit variable name is created, similar to Excel's $A$4 naming of cell results.

I actually like the grid of cells. I had an epiphany: It’s just a 2D extension of 1D lines of code we use in every other programming language.

I think this significantly speeds up analysis and model development. I kind of would like this same model adopted by more programming environments. 2D vs 1D lines of code. Particularly now that we have much larger, higher resolution displays.

If the argument is that you need the third dimension to reflect of the shape of the data, you're not going to want to stop at three dimensions when working with stuff like multi-dimensional tensors for machine learning, etc. So any 3D display system will have the same problem displaying a 4D grid as a 2D display system has displaying a 3D grid.

Of course any >2D spreadsheet or data viewing / editing / programming language (i.e. Python / Numpy / TensorFlow / Dwarf Fortress / Minecraft / etc) needs to project and slice high dimensional data onto the 2D screen somehow, because displays and human retinas are 2D by nature.

But if it's a practical question of optimizing for human perception (retinas are 2D), engineering (screens are 2D), usability (you can't see or click on something that's hidden behind something else), and user interface design, then 2D wins hands down over 3D.

Dave Ackley, who developed the Moveable Feast Machine, had some interesting thoughts about moving from 2D to 3D grids of cells, suggesting finite layering in z (depth), but unlimited scaling in x and y (2D grid):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21131468

DonHopkins on Oct 1, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Wolfram Rule 30 Prizes

Very beautiful and artistically rendered! Those would make great fireworks and weapons in Minecraft! From a different engineering perspective, Dave Ackley had some interesting things to say about the difficulties of going from 2D to 3D, which I quoted in an earlier discussion about visual programming:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18497585

David Ackley, who developed the two-dimensional CA-like "Moveable Feast Machine" architecture for "Robust First Computing", touched on moving from 2D to 3D in his retirement talk:

https://youtu.be/YtzKgTxtVH8?t=3780

"Well 3D is the number one question. And my answer is, depending on what mood I'm in, we need to crawl before we fly."

"Or I say, I need to actually preserve one dimension to build the thing and fix it. Imagine if you had a three-dimensional computer, how you can actually fix something in the middle of it? It's going to be a bit of a challenge."

"So fundamentally, I'm just keeping the third dimension in my back pocket, to do other engineering. I think it would be relatively easy to imagine taking a 2D model like this, and having a finite number of layers of it, sort of a 2.1D model, where there would be a little local communication up and down, and then it was indefinitely scalable in two dimensions."

"And I think that might in fact be quite powerful. Beyond that you think about things like what about wrap-around torus connectivity rooowaaah, non-euclidian dwooraaah, aaah uuh, they say you can do that if you want, but you have to respect indefinite scalability. Our world is 3D, and you can make little tricks to make toruses embedded in a thing, but it has other consequences."

Here's more stuff about the Moveable Feast Machine:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15560845

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14236973

The most amazing mind blowing demo is Robust-first Computing: Distributed City Generation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkSXERxucPc

And a paper about how that works:

https://www.cs.unm.edu/~ackley/papers/paper_tsmall1_11_24.pd...

Plus there's a lot more here:

https://movablefeastmachine.org/

Now he's working on a hardware implementation of indefinitely scalable robust first computing:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1M91QuLZfCzHjBMEKvIc-A

Alright, I wasn't aware about the calc feature from the front-page read impression ;)

They've always done a horrible job of hiding the dialog for managing named ranges. Easy to create them but knowing where they are is a PITA.