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I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

arstechnica.com

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Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#161

Post by ezst »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #158
ezst wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I want a database set up in minutes just to focus on the business side and nothing else, I simply fire up a new Django project (I suspect any other framework with an ORM and auto-generated CRUD UIs would be equally competent for that). I have nothing against Google Sheets, I really haven't put much thought into it in this context, but I would need some convincing that it's a better and easier way to kick things of…

That Django project needs a host to run on, even if it's just your local machine. If you want others to interact with it, you need to expose it to the internet through some means and think through the security implications of doing so. The Google Sheets approach doesn't need you to manage a process or web server. It is instantly shareable while letting Google worry about security, performance, availability, etc. The…

Thanks, that's a valid point. I have never thought of publishing a PoC web app as more than pushing some files on a server and editing a config file, but now I see how not everyone can be familiar with that.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#162

Post by caseyy »

The idea is neat but holy SaaS, the price for what it offers is ridiculous. It’s not even about having the money, it’s just that $828 p.a. price of entry to build a spreadsheet front-end is objectively a bad buy/business decision.

Most people would just learn to code at a boot camp for $828 so they don’t need codeless.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#163

Post by graeme »

smileybarry wrote: post #160

This looks great, but I got a bit of sticker shock when I saw Glide's plan to do this is $69 per month cost (billed yearly). There's a free tier, but with a 1-app limit and only Big Tables (no Google Sheets). I'd be fine with paying for personal apps, but $69/month feels a bit... steep.

It's a tool targeted at businesses. The article writer just found a use case that works for them personally.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#164

Post by bambax »

zoomablemind wrote: post #150
bambax wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are extensions that let you query Excel worksheet files directly from SQLite (no importing, no transformation, just direct query). It's quite fun to do; you can use Excel (or Libre office, etc.) to maintain the spreadsheet, and build reports with SQLite.

Could you mention a few of such, to save time going through search results?

The one I use is xlite

https://github.com/x2bool/xlite

It's read-only and mounts spreadsheets as virtual tables. Very fast.

Perhaps more relevant to this thread, libgsqlite loads Google Sheets as virtual tables:

https://github.com/0x6b/libgsqlite

(I haven't tested it though.)

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#165

Post by rashidae »

dvdsgl wrote: post #138

Founder of Glide (YC W19) mentioned in the article — thanks for the recognition. This was not an ad from us, we were surprised by the coverage. Glide’s customers are businesses building software for internal use. During YC we called these “dark apps” but since then we call them “apps for work.” We wanted something usable by IT and operations staff (not developers) that emphasized design and UX. Glide started as a sim…

I haven’t used Glide yet, but I’ve worked extensively with other ‘front-end interfaces for Airtable and Spreadsheets’, like Softr, Noloco and Bubble.

The first time I tried Glide, I struggled with the interface, and unfortunately, support didn’t respond to my messages, so I had to take a different direction.

That said, I’d love to give Glide a try. It’s incredible that we have direct access to founders like you here on HN.

Congrats on your success! From your perspective, where do you see no-code and low-code heading, especially with AI dramatically lowering the barriers to coding?

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#167

Post by ska »

ezst wrote: post #149
vishnugupta wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently I manage my startup’s accounting in Google sheet, and your comment gave me an idea to enhance it with Google Forms!

That... Sounds scary.

Clunky, but should be ok assuming a) a pretty simple structure and cashflow b) properly implemented double-entry, and c) backups.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#168

Post by diggan »

hliyan wrote: post #71
zie wrote: post #50

I tried going all on on Google Sheets earlier this year. I used the Python API and like almost nothing worked consistently. I got 1 sheet to work well with like 1k rows and thought woohoo this is great! So I went all-in, put 25k rows in and Google pooped the bed. It gave errors all the time, rows and columns were funky. API issues galore. SQLite however handled 25k rows without any errors, always rock solid. I gave u…

If you have more than a few thousand records, this is the wrong tool for the job. I've used Google Sheets as a "database" for a few applications in the past. In each case, it was an internal tool that did not generate more than a few thousand records, if that.

> If you have more than a few thousand records, this is the wrong tool for the job.

Just to be precise, Google Sheets might be the wrong tool for the job. Other spreadsheet applications can handle "more than a few thousand records" easily, seems this is a Google Sheets specific issue.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#169

Post by maxique »

miki123211 wrote: post #114
smusamashah wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monzo (online bank in UK) let you see all your transactions in a Google sheet (with some caveats e.g. interest earned is skipped). I wanted to make a total wealth chart over all years. It's so damn complicated in Google sheets. In MS Excel I could simply make a pivot chart, apply any aggregation on days/weeks and be done with it. But with Sheets I had to make a new aggregate column, filter data in another new column,…

My bank just exports to CSV, which is trivially importable to Excel, Sheets, Pandas or whatever else you need.

As I understand it, the appeal of Monzo's way is it's live updating rather than having to log in to some horribly outdated online banking portal and manually export

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#170

Post by ta988 »

dvdsgl wrote: post #138

Founder of Glide (YC W19) mentioned in the article — thanks for the recognition. This was not an ad from us, we were surprised by the coverage. Glide’s customers are businesses building software for internal use. During YC we called these “dark apps” but since then we call them “apps for work.” We wanted something usable by IT and operations staff (not developers) that emphasized design and UX. Glide started as a sim…

I know a few people who started to use glide for personal apps and were put off by the price. ($200/mo for over 3 personal apps is a bit tough).

They showed me what they were doing and that was absolutely incredible for people without programming experience. They integrated with spreadsheets and llms and their PDF collections of manuals for devices etc.

But as lower-income people they were stopped in their tracks and I found that really sad that there isn't an option for non money-making or business supporting applications. In their case they were all doing that for their hobbies or for supporting their aging parents and giving them tools to handle their tasks, chores and care.

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