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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#162

Post by senand »

Interesting! Congrats on the launch.

I tried it out, and just first feedback:

- I often use the "Home" and "End" key to go the start/end of the line when I'm editing a cell. It scrolls to start/end of the whole spreadsheet, however. Since I'm not a spreadsheet user, I'm not sure if that's expected.

- The handlers like "on_dropdown_change" should receive an argument for the cell it's coming from, so you can e.g. change the cell that's next to it. Or how else is this supposed to be done?

It's quite cool :-) I suppose one problem could be integration with existing Google Sheets / Excel sheets?

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

#163

Post by jackamadeo »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #160

This looks fantastic, and sadly completely misses the mark on a huge industry that uses excel every day: investment management, hedge funds, etc. Why? Because this is yet another cloud only solution with no self hosting possibility. These firms are very-very rich and would pay good money, but a very small %-age will be willing to give you their data. It doesn't matter how many certifications you quote about data trea…

Thanks! We've talked to a lot of people in hedge funds and investments, and you're right that a lot of them care about a self-hosted solution. This is definitely on our radar as a potential future path for the product.

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

#164

Post by dosinga »

senand wrote: post #162

Interesting! Congrats on the launch. I tried it out, and just first feedback: - I often use the "Home" and "End" key to go the start/end of the line when I'm editing a cell. It scrolls to start/end of the whole spreadsheet, however. Since I'm not a spreadsheet user, I'm not sure if that's expected. - The handlers like "on_dropdown_change" should receive an argument for the cell it's coming from, so you can e.g. chang…

Home/End : Oh that feels like a bug. Stop propagate that event already!

> The handlers like "on_dropdown_change" should receive an argument for the cell it's coming from

They do! If you define a function that does not take a parameter it is all fine, but we introspect if you do and if so, pass on an event object:

def on_dropdown_change(value, event): event.cell.set_background_color(value * 50 + 100, 100, 100)

would change the cell with the drop down's background color based on the value selected

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

#166

Post by yubiox »

dosinga wrote: post #104
yubiox wrote: post #86

Is there an api or cli interface so I don't have to use the web ide?

Sorry, not yet! I suppose we could allow editing the code pane using an external editor, but the spreadsheet would be tricky I think. Or do you have an idea of how that would work?

I don't really know. Maybe something as simple as using a git remote, I then edit in my editor of choice, commit, push to remote, then pull in the gui to get the latest. I'd rather do all that than have to use a different editor. Just something to think about. Thanks.

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

#167

Post by e12e »

dosinga wrote: post #96
e12e wrote: post #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

You can access stuff in a different way of course. Each sheet is also a python object, so you can just go Sheet1[20, 20] or Sheet1[10:20] if you like that way better

I suppose that means you can reference eg the cell "above" by doing some kind of self+/-offset?

For what I mean see: https://excelchamps.com/formulas/r1c1/

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

#168

Post by sullivanmatt »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #160

This looks fantastic, and sadly completely misses the mark on a huge industry that uses excel every day: investment management, hedge funds, etc. Why? Because this is yet another cloud only solution with no self hosting possibility. These firms are very-very rich and would pay good money, but a very small %-age will be willing to give you their data. It doesn't matter how many certifications you quote about data trea…

If they had built this so they handled the SaaS part, but could persist the data in your organization's own AWS / GCP / Azure blob storage, would that be enough to get the solution past the line for acceptance? I'm in security, but in tech, where SaaS solutions are usually much more accepted.

The challenge with on-prem software of course is just how much support it takes to maintain. At my last gig, we deployed new microservices every 5 minutes; I can't imagine how much it would have sucked to worry about maintaining on-prem installs.

I'm wondering if this kind of shared model could make it workable.

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

#169

Post by dosinga »

dmitrykoval wrote: post #159

This is really cool and promising product! So many times when I was getting a google docs spreadsheet from non-engineering folks I was wondering if only I can embed a small jupyter notebook with a few python cells and a nice looking pandas chart, using this data.. Congrats on the launch!

Thanks! We like it too :)
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