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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

#111

Post by beenpola »

pbreit wrote: post #80

Good opportunity to highlight Google "Apps Script" which is one of the most powerful but unknown tools in the web: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/sheets Includes easy fetching: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/url-fetc... I suppose python could be better for this use case but javascript seems to work fine. And it's all built righ in to Google Sheets.

I feel like I should plug something I've been helping with for a while- it's not documented well yet, nor fully CRUD capable, but if you want to interface with Google Sheets a little better (and get things out in arrays of objects) this might be a good start:

https://github.com/texas-mcallen-mission/sheetCore

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

#113

Post by metalliqaz »

jacobsimon wrote: post #48
vaporary wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thru…

I already had a google account when it came time to try Google Docs.

I'm not going to make a new account somewhere just to demo what they offer. I have to be convinced before I enter my personal info

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

#114

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

Looks cool, but the get started --> skip signup to try now --> empty tyne flow is broken. When I click "empty tyne", it just reloads the page and blocks you with "empty tyne" again and again.

Also, I'm curious if it supports live collaborative editing like google sheets/docs/etc do?

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

#115

Post by ricklamers »

dosinga wrote: post #109
ricklamers wrote: post #106

Wow this is cool! I created a similar thing over the summer but never took it anywhere because I felt GSheets would just add Python. https://github.com/ricklamers/gridstudio Rooting for you guys

Nice. Any learnings that we got profit from?

Get the shortcuts right hehe

In all seriousness, what I’d worry about the most is Sheets/Excel is a Swiss army knife and it’s used for tens if not hundreds of different use cases. Find out which use case/persona this programmability angle is super useful for and go after that crowd ruthlessly. Strip away anything that could be a distraction, if not you’ll be pulled in all directions.

You don’t eat GSheets all at once, you go bite by bite.

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

#116

Post by michaelmior »

dosinga wrote: post #107
dexwiz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheet1[10:20] looks like the list slicing syntax. Are there any issues there?

You are correct, that is the slicing syntax. We to carefully interpret the ":" in the right way. For example: sort(l, lambda A:F1(A)) doesn't invoke Sheet1[10:20] just returns the 10 to 20s row of that sheet, which I think is the most reasonable thing to do here

I assume you mean rows 11 to 20 like the Python syntax would do or is it different because spreadsheet row numbers start at 1 instead of 0?

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

#117

Post by michaelmior »

dspillett wrote: post #98
jones1618 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks useful. Of course, one big difference is Neptyne is "in the cloud" versus an app you have to do download.

> versus an app you have to do download For some, an advantage rather than just a difference. Different strokes for different folks, of course.

> For some, an advantage rather than just a difference.

And for others, a disadvantage, rather than just a difference.

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

#119

Post by ricklamers »

dosinga wrote: post #109
ricklamers wrote: post #106

Wow this is cool! I created a similar thing over the summer but never took it anywhere because I felt GSheets would just add Python. https://github.com/ricklamers/gridstudio Rooting for you guys

Nice. Any learnings that we got profit from?

Also, given how many startups have waged war with spreadsheets probably best to watch https://youtu.be/GMIawSAygO4 for an introduction to the concept of “tar pit ideas”.

Then at least you know what you’re getting yourselves into :)

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

#120

Post by jackamadeo »

alskfkks wrote: post #95

I don't know what to make of the fact that reactivity doesn't seem to be discussed in the docs or the tutorial. I am a fan of ObservableHQ's reactive JavaScript notebooks, in which blocks of code get rerun when their inputs change. This is reactivity in the same sense as spreadsheets are reactive, and it's pretty neat. One nice feature of ObservableHQ is that you can use free variables when writing code blocks, and t…

(Neptyne cofounder here)

That's probably something we should dig more into in the docs, yeah. Neptyne works like a ipython/Jupyter notebook in that everything is in scope all the time. So you can write your code in an imperative way (e.g. `B10 = some_value`) within a function, or you can do use a functional style.

We handle spreadsheet-style reactivity by building the dependency graph out of any cell addresses mentioned in the cell itself. So if you have `=my_func(A1)` in one cell, it will re-run when A1 changes. But if my_func reads from, say, B1, it will not automatically re-run when B1 changes.

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