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Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

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Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#41

Post by dosinga »

alfor wrote: post #34

Questions: This is a platform as a service? How does the frontend work with the backend, it’s all backend and magic stuff to reflect it on the frontend?

> This is a platform as a service? That is correct

> How does the frontend work with the backend, it’s all backend and magic stuff to reflect it on the frontend?

All the logic is happening the backend, yeah. The Jupyter kernel runs Python, but the Python is processed in a way that it understands spreadsheet expressions like A1, B3:C8 and has the Excel functions available. The frontend reflects the state of the backend at all times and syncs over a websocket. This setup gets you multi user for free.

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#42

Post by wiremine »

I like the idea: I was actually looking at an open source tool that does something similar: combine spreadsheets with python.

I do have a question: Similar tools tend to fall down after the code grows to a certain size. Modularity, unit tests, etc. become more useful at this point. I'm wondering if Neptyne will (or does?) support these sorts of features?

Edit: Here's a link to the developer docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zLOXBoy-nf05SU3d5sZ7lDDg...

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#43

Post by dosinga »

slotrans wrote: post #30

can it handle a million rows? 10M? believe it or not this is my biggest problem with Sheets, and while Excel does better it's still capped at 1M

Currently it cannot. However we find that many millions of row use cases don't actually need those millions of rows to be in the spreadsheet - you just want to be able to process that amount of data. So connect to a SQL database from the python side of things, read in 10 million rows, aggregate them into something succinct and write that to the spreadsheet is to sort of thing we're seeing.

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#44

Post by jackamadeo »

version_five wrote: post #22

This sounds like a really good idea - combining spreadsheet convenience with being able to do programmatic manipulations with python can be really value for people who are using spreadsheets to do modeling (e.g financial). I think (especially based on some other comments) a big challenge will be just getting people out of their current bubble. If you do financial modeling, you might be entrenched in excel, and if you…

(co-founder of Neptyne here)

Our biggest challenge as you say is definitely the fact that lots of users will be entrenched in Excel. Our goal right now is to appeal not to those who are happy in Excel today, but to those who have grown disillusioned: lots of users today build up amazingly complicated things in Excel and grow frustrated by the difficulty of maintaining that complexity. Python can be a much better fit in many cases for a lot of that complexity.

And as a platform for data science, we've found Neptyne really nice for sharing results. I was surprised at how often I heard from users: "well, we usually do everything in Jupyter, but then whenever management wants to see the output, they ask for it in a spreadsheet".

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#45

Post by jackamadeo »

kdeldycke wrote: post #26

The concept of Python-based spreadsheets was explored by Resolver One[1], a defunct proprietary desktop app that was discontinued ~10 years ago[2]. It seems a web version of the app has been published in open-source[3] but that too has been EOL. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120211201410/http://www.resolv... [2] https://www.resolversystems.com [3] https://github.com/pythonanywhere/dirigible-spreadsheet

(cofounder of Neptyne here)

Thanks for mentioning this! I came across Resolve One recently in another HN thread. Were you a user yourself? What did you think of it?

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#46

Post by dosinga »

wiremine wrote: post #42

I like the idea: I was actually looking at an open source tool that does something similar: combine spreadsheets with python. I do have a question: Similar tools tend to fall down after the code grows to a certain size. Modularity, unit tests, etc. become more useful at this point. I'm wondering if Neptyne will (or does?) support these sorts of features? Edit: Here's a link to the developer docs: https://docs.google.…

Having multiple code panes (files) is a recurring feature request that hopefully we'll get to at some point. Similarly we have some ideas around testing - automated testing for spreadsheets seems like it could be very useful! You can pip install anything you want though, so having your orgs libraries separately installable is one way to go about it.

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#47

Post by jackamadeo »

mcdonje wrote: post #19

Very cool. I've done plenty of work supporting non-technical users who primarily interact with spreadsheets. This would definitely make my life easier. Is it going to be cloud-only, or are you planning on making a desktop app? If it's cloud-only, you can grab some (hopefully many) Google Sheets users, but most Excel users will probably pass.

Thank you! I do hope you find it useful.

To answer your question, it's cloud-only -- we wanted to build Neptyne as a collaborative platform where teams of programmers and non-programmer types could get things done together. I think you're right in that this will mean it doesn't work for a certain class of user, but for now at least, we're focused on Neptyne as a web app.

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#48

Post by jacobsimon »

vaporary wrote: post #7
smugma wrote: post #2

I had three minutes, clicked tutorial and got a modal asking me to sign up. Left the page.

I didn't even get three minutes; as soon as the page opened, I couldn't do anything without signing into Google or creating an account. Closed the tab.

Ugh fine I’ll take the bait. If you all don’t want to create an account, don’t expect to try anyone’s products! It doesn’t even make sense from a software perspective: A spreadsheet needs to belong to a user. You can’t edit a google doc or sheet without being logged in. Sure, they could create a sandbox demo of their product that works without an account, but that’s kind of an unreasonable feature expectation to thrust onto every website.

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#49

Post by ragnarsson »

vaporary wrote: post #7
smugma wrote: post #2

I had three minutes, clicked tutorial and got a modal asking me to sign up. Left the page.

I didn't even get three minutes; as soon as the page opened, I couldn't do anything without signing into Google or creating an account. Closed the tab.

Modern problems require modern solutions. I keep a separate gmail id just for this. Also I signed in using gmail and redirect didn't work in firefox.

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#50

Post by DavidFerris »

Very cool! I constantly struggle trying to do things in spreadsheets that are easy in Python. But I/O makes it annoying to write one-off scripts for a 30 second op. This would solve that pain point!

I would love a Google Sheets integration, since that's where I already live with most of my CSV/Sheets data + it would seamlessly fit into my workflow. If this was a Chrome extension I would have installed it today.

As is, I don't see myself using another spreadsheet app.

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