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Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

rowzero.io

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Re: Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

#11

Post by jasongill »

This looks really promising. We generate about 1gb of financial CSV files per day for finance/accounting/audit teams and the number one response is "wow this data is great, but my computer just can't handle it".

The biggest issue that I think I would run into in my organization is that all of the spreadsheet lovers are Excel die-hards and they refuse to even use Google Sheets, not to mention something else that isn't Excel.

But maybe they could finally be convinced to stop complaining aboutrequesting huge files with something like this...

Re: Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

#12

Post by gamegoblin »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #9
breckognize wrote: post #2

Founder/CEO here. When I worked in AWS S3, I spent a lot of time in Excel. Even as a dev, it was the fastest way to explore data, build models, and share forecasts with business partners. My Excel usage was plagued by slow performance, poor cloud integration, and no first-class Python support. I loved the richness and responsiveness of Excel, but I had to give up too much power to get it. This felt like a false choic…

Excel 2010 is several times faster than the latest Excel versions. What are the performance metrics compared to Excel 2010?

It varies depending on what you are doing, but is probably 100x faster on average.

Some things are literally 10000x faster because we are internally using algorithms with better asymptotic complexity than Excel, but there are a few edge cases where we are maybe only 10x faster

(but we are always working to improve that — half my job is just analyzing flame graphs and grinding out perf improvements)

Re: Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

#13

Post by breckognize »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #9
breckognize wrote: post #2

Founder/CEO here. When I worked in AWS S3, I spent a lot of time in Excel. Even as a dev, it was the fastest way to explore data, build models, and share forecasts with business partners. My Excel usage was plagued by slow performance, poor cloud integration, and no first-class Python support. I loved the richness and responsiveness of Excel, but I had to give up too much power to get it. This felt like a false choic…

Excel 2010 is several times faster than the latest Excel versions. What are the performance metrics compared to Excel 2010?

When we claim 100x faster than desktop Excel, we're looking at supported row counts, import speeds from Snowflake, and time to drag large XLOOKUPs. We'll do a deep dive on performance in another blog post next week. Stay tuned!

Re: Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

#14

Post by skadamat »

Honestly, I'm really excited about this next generation of spreadsheet software.

- Causal.app

- Rows.com

- Equals.com

- and at least 50 others I've found

I'm waiting for someone to create a really high performant spreadsheet engine that runs in WASM to power even more spreadsheet-y applications. The direct manipulation of spreadsheets is super underrated.

Re: Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

#15

Post by gamegoblin »

jasongill wrote: post #11

This looks really promising. We generate about 1gb of financial CSV files per day for finance/accounting/audit teams and the number one response is "wow this data is great, but my computer just can't handle it". The biggest issue that I think I would run into in my organization is that all of the spreadsheet lovers are Excel die-hards and they refuse to even use Google Sheets, not to mention something else that isn't…

We try really hard to be Excel-compatible with all our formulas and hotkeys, etc. If there is a formula or hotkey we are missing, let us know and we will add it (usually with The use-case you describe is exactly what we built it for. There are a lot of people who have data that is no longer human-scale and won't fit into Excel, but they still want to use their Excel skills.

We love Excel and spreadsheets, but when working at AWS we found we just had too much data to fit into it.

Re: Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

#16

Post by samstave »

gamegoblin wrote: post #15
jasongill wrote: post #11

This looks really promising. We generate about 1gb of financial CSV files per day for finance/accounting/audit teams and the number one response is "wow this data is great, but my computer just can't handle it". The biggest issue that I think I would run into in my organization is that all of the spreadsheet lovers are Excel die-hards and they refuse to even use Google Sheets, not to mention something else that isn't…

We try really hard to be Excel-compatible with all our formulas and hotkeys, etc. If there is a formula or hotkey we are missing, let us know and we will add it (usually with The use-case you describe is exactly what we built it for. There are a lot of people who have data that is no longer human-scale and won't fit into Excel, but they still want to use their Excel skills. We love Excel and spreadsheets, but when wo…

This is just a fun FYI ; This is 8 years old! (as of yesterday!!) but its pretty amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI_riscmviI&list=PLJsVF3gZDc...

Its Martin Skreli (yes that one) -- but see how fast this guy is with excel... this is what I imagine when I think of excel power users...

(But also, he does a lesson in DD on investing and doing calcs in Excel - so aside from awesome Excel input, there is good investing info here - recall this was the guy that bought a medical company and immediately raised the price 7,000% or some such (he then bought the Wu Tang Album whilst imprisoned)

Re: Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

#17

Post by sbensu »

jasongill wrote: post #11

This looks really promising. We generate about 1gb of financial CSV files per day for finance/accounting/audit teams and the number one response is "wow this data is great, but my computer just can't handle it". The biggest issue that I think I would run into in my organization is that all of the spreadsheet lovers are Excel die-hards and they refuse to even use Google Sheets, not to mention something else that isn't…

I've found that while people don't want to change out of Excel they are forced to by the size of new files. The more data is generated by computers, the less likely it is to fit in Excel

I imagine many professions won't be able to use Excel in 10 years based on this trend.

Re: Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

#18

Post by WillAdams »

skadamat wrote: post #14

Honestly, I'm really excited about this next generation of spreadsheet software. - Causal.app - Rows.com - Equals.com - and at least 50 others I've found I'm waiting for someone to create a really high performant spreadsheet engine that runs in WASM to power even more spreadsheet-y applications. The direct manipulation of spreadsheets is super underrated.

Are any of these multi-dimensional?

Still looking for a replacement Lotus Improv (can't justify Quantrix Financial).

Re: Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

#19

Post by eichin »

https://spreadsheets-are-all-you-need.ai/ has a 1.5G (in excel-binary save form) spreadsheet that would make an entertaining benchmark (not a particularly relevant one for your target market, unless you want to get into "frightening educational tools for AI researchers" which is not a notably excel-friendly space - just a hilarious one.)

Re: Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

#20

Post by david_draco »

breckognize wrote: post #2

Founder/CEO here. When I worked in AWS S3, I spent a lot of time in Excel. Even as a dev, it was the fastest way to explore data, build models, and share forecasts with business partners. My Excel usage was plagued by slow performance, poor cloud integration, and no first-class Python support. I loved the richness and responsiveness of Excel, but I had to give up too much power to get it. This felt like a false choic…

How does it compare to gnumeric in terms of speed?
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