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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

#171

Post by maximinus_thrax »

anyfactor wrote: post #46

I've built quite a few dashboards while working on proof-of-concept feature/product engineering. Even though people often think I'm joking, almost always the backend database was a Google Sheet. Google Sheets has great API support, easy to write functionality, convenient read and file dumps, works well with Pandas/SQL, and has a universally appreciated UX. Data validation can be annoying if the "admin" directly enter…

Back in 2010, I was in a work meeting making small talk and we were discussing how cringe some advertising is nowadays. One of us, a program manager who was ~15 years my senior told me it's because we're not the target demographic and that millennials are targeted differently, mainly through word-of-mouth and generally Guerrilla marketing tactics.

Whenever I see articles like these and comments like yours, I can't stop thinking about that meeting.

Edit: to clarify, I am not accusing you of anything. But I do suspect the article to be part of a Google marketing campaign.

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

#172

Post by dhruvarora013 »

For my workplace, I built an internal orgchart and the backend is entirely Google Sheets. It's been completely hassle free and I've spent almost no time on the code since building it three years ago. As employees join and leave, HR adds/deletes a row in the sheet and only they have access to the "database" besides myself. In case of accidental deletion, there's the handy restore ability built into sheets so a database "rollback" is also trivial and can be done by HR without my input.

Sheets as a database for light web apps is absolutely joyful to build with.

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

#173

Post by carlosjobim »

xtiansimon wrote: post #128
anyfactor wrote: post #46

I've built quite a few dashboards while working on proof-of-concept feature/product engineering. Even though people often think I'm joking, almost always the backend database was a Google Sheet. Google Sheets has great API support, easy to write functionality, convenient read and file dumps, works well with Pandas/SQL, and has a universally appreciated UX. Data validation can be annoying if the "admin" directly enter…

Slightly off-topic. In small business accounting, I have a persistent need for a FileMaker Pro like solution for invoices. FMP was conscious of on-screen layout and print. ReTool has been recommended as similar replacement for FMP but they don’t have the idea of creating print-ready documented receipts and invoices. You don’t even need to print it, you just need to keep it for the IRS. I love the idea of using Google…

There's gotta be a ton of solutions for sale for small business accounting, no? Among them FileMaker pro?

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

#174

Post by mattigames »

diggan wrote: post #168
hliyan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's not fixed on purpose, they do have cloud DB offering and all that overpriced jazz to sell you.

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

#175

Post by baobun »

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.

Can also be a feature to cap the potential scale for a PoC you want to keep from getting productized as-is.

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

#176

Post by baobun »

p2detar wrote: post #132
hliyan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A few thousand like the product of rows*cols? Just curious.

records = rows

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

#177

Post by causal »

rashidae wrote: post #85

During COVID, I built a quick no-code solution to help ‘all-inclusive resorts’ in Cancun and Punta Cana. It started with guests scanning a QR code, filling out a short form, and scheduling their Antigen/PCR tests. Over time, it evolved to help nurses manage operations, streamline test results, and send certificates via email. What began as a DIY project during lockdown scaled quickly to Mexico City, the Dominican Rep…

+1 for Airtable API. Way ahead of Google Sheets IMO.

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

#178

Post by causal »

dvdsgl wrote: post #140
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…

Hello! Founder of Glide FTA. Yes, many of our customers hit the issues you mentioned as they scale spreadsheet-based applications. We built Big Tables for this case: https://www.glideapps.com/big-tables You keep most of the convenience and programmability of a spreadsheet, but you get Postgres scale and a first-class API (which includes atomic table swapping for updating large datasets). It also supports live updatin…

Thank you for also having Airtable support, which I vastly prefer over Google Sheets for any kind of API work

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

#179

Post by anthk »

levocardia wrote: post #79
lelandfe wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait till you hear about the spreadsheets researchers use... My chemist friend uses Excel files that regularly exceed 2GB of just text...

which is an awful idea because some versions of Excel will, if you open a file with more than 1million rows (or ~16k columns), automatically truncate and delete the excess data! And don't even get me started on automatic date conversion.

Computer illiteracy and shitty platforms (MSOffice is not apt for science at all) costs Scientists biliions on broken research:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02211-4?error=coo...

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

#180

Post by liontwist »

ezst wrote: post #154
anyfactor wrote: post #46

I've built quite a few dashboards while working on proof-of-concept feature/product engineering. Even though people often think I'm joking, almost always the backend database was a Google Sheet. Google Sheets has great API support, easy to write functionality, convenient read and file dumps, works well with Pandas/SQL, and has a universally appreciated UX. Data validation can be annoying if the "admin" directly enter…

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…

I like to just start with a SQLite UI editor.

You can just query a database and work with the results directly . In a dynamic language like python there is little advantage to loading rows into classes. That Django query language is so painful and opaque.

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