Very cool! Does it allow real-time multi-person editing? (It's not very clear from the landing page.)
If so - how do you handle multiple people editing the code area at the same time?
Would be a killer feature if this was robust!
Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python
81–90 of 221 posts
Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python
#82Looks cool! Since you mentioned all the magic happening in the backend, how does it run? How do you ensure I am not running malicious Python code, like infinite for loop or never-ending recursion? Also, disabling file or network IO? Did you also explore running Python in the browser using wasm?
Good questions!
So it runs all in a container. If you want to crash that container, you can! You can't (we really hope) escape from that container though. You have full access to the local file system and you can access network IO - without those you would hardly have a full Python environment. The container runs a Jupyter kernel with a spreadsheet run time. You can break the spreadsheet run time if you want. But it will just kill your own thing.
We've looked at wasm, but we want to solve one thing at the time and running Jupyter kernels in containers is a fairly well understood way to do things. Plus you do want to support server side calculations for a number of reasons. Let me know if you have more questions!
Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python
#83I had three minutes, clicked tutorial and got a modal asking me to sign up. Left the page.
We hear you and we do want to make it possible to try the tutorial without signing up for an account. We're working on making that possible shortly. I'll update here when that's possible
EDIT: this should work now. Just click the new button that says "Skip signup and let me try it out first"
Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python
#84How does it interact with libraries that need the file system? e.g. Can I use requests-cache?
Yes. You can use whatever you want. We do ship with a bunch of useful things installed (requests, pandas, plotly) but you can pip install whatever you want.
Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python
#85> You mix Excel style cell addresses (A1, C3) and ranges (B2:B20)
Well, that's unfortunate for "power" users - I'd imagine they'd want what excel calls r1c1 mode:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/excel/...
One of the many valuable lessons from Joel Spolsky "You suck at Excel" (around 8:30 mark): https://youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c
Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python
#86Is there an api or cli interface so I don't have to use the web ide?
Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python
#87How does it interact with libraries that need the file system? e.g. Can I use requests-cache?
It should work. I haven't tried requests-cache exactly but in Neptyne you're running with a Jupyter kernel in a Docker container backend, so you do have a filesystem to work with. That file system is mostly ephemeral though -- when you leave and come back, you'll get a new container, so anything you need to persist should live in the spreadsheet itself.
Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python
#88Very cool but what's to stop Microsoft from doing this in Excel and making it instantly integrated into the software that millions of us already use?
Microsoft already has an identical offering (VBScript in Excel) so we can all see how good Microsoft is at developing such a thing.
Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python
#89I'd like to try - it's quite a cool idea. But the interface seems broken. Is that the HN hug of death, or my corporate netowrk playing up?
What exactly are you seeing that is broken? Can you share a screenshot?
Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python
#90Pricing info? Maybe I'm missing it but I don't see it on the site.