Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code
1–10 of 142 posts
Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code
#2Every day I think about how Microsoft Access allowed otherwise not-so-tech-savvy users to, with just a little training and practice, build a complete relational database for their entire business, supported by a relatively sane GUI and a way to build forms and reports with very little (if any) 'code'. I have no idea what small companies are using nowadays, but I think there has to be some untapped middle ground somewhere between Microsoft Access and a dumb spreadsheet.
Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code
#3Every day I think about how Microsoft Access allowed otherwise not-so-tech-savvy users to, with just a little training and practice, build a complete relational database for their entire business, supported by a relatively sane GUI and a way to build forms and reports with very little (if any) 'code'. I have no idea what small companies are using nowadays, but I think there has to be some untapped middle ground somew…
I'm structuring my UI for Adama (https://www.adama-platform.com/) around the baby of Access and Excel, and the engine is available in early access now. I love Excel and Access, and I plan a future pivot into small business space.
Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code
#4Every day I think about how Microsoft Access allowed otherwise not-so-tech-savvy users to, with just a little training and practice, build a complete relational database for their entire business, supported by a relatively sane GUI and a way to build forms and reports with very little (if any) 'code'. I have no idea what small companies are using nowadays, but I think there has to be some untapped middle ground somew…
sounds like you are describing grist
Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code
#5I’ve been doing this for customers for years now using Microsoft Lists (sometimes I use Excel) as the back end and PowerApps as the front end gui/data entry. Now the language from PowerApps (which is based on Excel) has been open sourced and Microsoft want to make it available in other apps too. That has questionable value but my solutions continue to be popular because the people I make them or can easily edit and make simple changes.
Some of the solutions we make have been widely adopted too, with hundreds and in some cases thousands of users.
Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code
#6Warning: I'm a founder working in the spreadsheet space, so take the rest of my this comment with a (large) grain of salt. I've written before [1] (HN and elsewhere) about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. As this article mentions, there are many ways we can push this forward.
I personally think the most powerful low-code spreadsheet tools we can build are those that allow spreadsheet users to easily transition to full programming languages, if they want to. So rather than locking users into limited and proprietary product number #115 (some of them are mentioned in this article), IMO it's better if users can transition to a full programming language (like Python) very naturally. Som I've spent the past 2 years building Mito [2].
Mito is a spreadsheet extension to your JupyterLab environment. You can display any Pandas dataframe as a spreadsheet, and edit it in a very similar way to Excel. For each edit you make, it generates the corresponding Python code below for those edits. Practically, you can think about Mito as recording a macro, but instead of generating scummy-crummy VBA code, it generates Python.
We're open core [3]. Feedback greatly appreciated!
[1] https://naterush.io/blog/Spreadsheets-are-the-Ultimate-Progr... [2] https://trymito.io [3] https://github.com/mito-ds/monorepo
Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code
#7Every day I think about how Microsoft Access allowed otherwise not-so-tech-savvy users to, with just a little training and practice, build a complete relational database for their entire business, supported by a relatively sane GUI and a way to build forms and reports with very little (if any) 'code'. I have no idea what small companies are using nowadays, but I think there has to be some untapped middle ground somew…
Microsoft Access is, of course, still around. It would be great if there were a solid way to develop a database, forms, and reports in Access and then deploy it to the web.
If you've ever had to work with someone else's Access database, it is unusual to see a reasonably normalized relational database. Most people are much more comfortable with the single flat file of Sharepoint lists.
Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code
#8Every day I think about how Microsoft Access allowed otherwise not-so-tech-savvy users to, with just a little training and practice, build a complete relational database for their entire business, supported by a relatively sane GUI and a way to build forms and reports with very little (if any) 'code'. I have no idea what small companies are using nowadays, but I think there has to be some untapped middle ground somew…
My anecdotal experience says Power Query.
Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code
#9Every day I think about how Microsoft Access allowed otherwise not-so-tech-savvy users to, with just a little training and practice, build a complete relational database for their entire business, supported by a relatively sane GUI and a way to build forms and reports with very little (if any) 'code'. I have no idea what small companies are using nowadays, but I think there has to be some untapped middle ground somew…
Microsoft Access is, of course, still around. It would be great if there were a solid way to develop a database, forms, and reports in Access and then deploy it to the web. If you've ever had to work with someone else's Access database, it is unusual to see a reasonably normalized relational database. Most people are much more comfortable with the single flat file of Sharepoint lists.
For stuff at the scale of a small Access database, does the normalization (or lack of) end up being a big deal?
I get that there are real advantages, I'm just wondering out loud whether they are universally applicable/important to small scale databases.
Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code
#10Warning: I'm a founder working in the spreadsheet space, so take the rest of my this comment with a (large) grain of salt. I've written before [1] (HN and elsewhere) about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. As this article mentions, there are many ways we can push this forward. I personally think the most powerful low-code spreadsheet tools we ca…
Just curious, why as a Linux user shouldn't I use Libreoffice calc with python? Why bring in something so proprietary?