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Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

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Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#171

Post by gruseom »

gsiener wrote: post #153
gruseom wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could the "clever protocol" simply be: refresh the numbers when the user refreshes a page?

The issue with this is that Excel refreshes the active workbook by default after every change. Any quant or someone dealing with huge sheets of formulas learn that you can change this behavior to default to refresh via shift+F9 (I think)

That's for local changes. I think what we're talking about here is a sheet (at one URL) referencing a completely different sheet (at some other URL). The equivalent in Excel, I suppose, would be one .xls file referencing another.

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#172

Post by jherdman »

I want access to whatever data is inside the spreadsheet. Currently Excel locks away your data unless you use a library of some sort that may not necessarily be 100% accurate, or capable of a specific feature.

Likewise, generating spreadsheets should be easy for 3rd parties.

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#174

Post by knectar »

I worked in a consulting firm that had built its entire business on Excel "apps", heavy, clever VBA-driven rich GUI interface spreadsheets applications that were replicated time the number of people in the client organization. While a bit wonky, and web-naive in way, these app's proved to be surprisingly resilient and flexible for "lowly" Excel (lowly only in the hierarchy of "legit" programming environments). From this experience, I would say that what would have been a profoundly useful tool, would be a software conversion tool, that could capture some of the logic, or UI of such "apps" and webify them, or at least convert some of the syntax into better object oriented code. This is of course a tall order, if not impossible. The dream of automating quality code may be nigh impossible, but it would be a huge business value even if executed only in part.

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#175

Post by eru »

nx wrote: post #166
eru wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make my point explicit: Excel being Turing-complete does not imply it being feature-complete.

I know. It was a joke, thus the ":P", and so was the "O RLY?". But maybe the emoticon wasn't clear enough and I should've added an interrobang there? Anyway, thanks for the -10 karma points. BTW, I do my spreadsheets with a Von Neumann derivate of a finite state automaton.

Perhaps "O RLY?" was not witty enough?

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#176

Post by GHFigs »

An alternative question might be: what are you doing in Excel today for which Excel was not intended?

I remember Wil Shipley (of Omni, Delicious Monster) talking about how they originally developed OmniOutliner after noticing that most people were using Excel to make simple lists rather than complex spreadsheets, so there was a market for something less expensive than Excel and more tailored to the things people were actually doing with it. With a product as broadly installed as Excel I'm sure there's still under-served niches.

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#177

Post by GHFigs »

eru wrote: post #175
nx wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. It was a joke, thus the ":P", and so was the "O RLY?". But maybe the emoticon wasn't clear enough and I should've added an interrobang there? Anyway, thanks for the -10 karma points. BTW, I do my spreadsheets with a Von Neumann derivate of a finite state automaton.

Perhaps "O RLY?" was not witty enough?

  HAI
  CAN HAS STDIO?
  I HAS A WITTEH
  I HAS A KARMA
  
  IZ WITTEH BIGGER THAN "O RLY"?
    YARLY
      UP KARMA!!1
    NOWAI
      DOWN KARMA!!1
    KTHX
  KTHXBYE

  BTW "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting."
  BTW http://lolcode.com/

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#178

Post by brendano »

neilk wrote: post #114

1. Really, really great looking graphs. Excel fails so hard at this it's unbelievable. 2. Easy navigation. The giant spreadsheet model is a very simple metaphor but sometimes I'd like a way to jump to different parts of it more easily. 3. Not be a spreadsheet. The one-big-sheet model might be better represented as a bunch of smaller tables floating in space with formulas interconnecting them. The letter/number conven…

I'm still waiting for an Excel-like program that can make graphs as pretty as R.

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#179

Post by anamax »

jaxn wrote: post #126
anamax wrote: post #42

Instead of "new, more powerful spreadsheet", how about providing spreadsheet interface for a relational database? Of course, if you want it to be successful, you need to be able to import Excel spreadsheets as is, including macros and formula, and you also may need to maintain the linking to/from other microsoft artifacts.

Set the Excel Spreadsheet to pull from a remote data source using ODBC. That gives the added security of allowing people to play with the data without changing the data in the database.

But you want them to be able to manipulate the data from Excel.

There is a spreadsheet interface metaphor. Parts of it are quite useful. Other parts are less convenient given the ways that people program/use spreadsheets. Some of them are better addressed with parts of the database metaphor.

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