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I only use Google Sheets

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Re: I only use Google Sheets

#81

Post by bdcravens »

nashashmi wrote: post #36

This is what we did in Excel. Is Google Sheet better somehow? Or is that only what new age kids know since college has adopted google products?

48 years old, so definitely not a "new age kid"

Sharing is the killer feature. Not that you can't share with Office 360 these days, but many of us were sharing Google Sheets years ago when the rest of the world was still sending Excel files as email attachments, and there hasn't been much reason to switch.

Probably not used by many, but if you need to break out of basic functions, some may find working in Javascript preferable to VBA.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#82

Post by dotancohen »

corry wrote: post #59

Always overlooked point in these pro/anti-spreadsheet discussions: A spreadsheet gives you a DB, a quickly and easily customized UI, and iterative / easy-to-debug data processing all in a package that everyone in the working world already understands. AND with a freedom that allows the creator to do it however they want. AND it's fairly portable. You can build incredible things in spreadsheets. I remain convinced tha…

  > especially so for people who can't code.
Presumably those people learned to use a spreadsheet. What makes learning spreadsheet formulae possible, but SQL, Python, or R impossible?

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#83

Post by vlucas »

brap wrote: post #23

Absolutely agree with OP. One thing I would add is, sometimes when you need some extra complexity that's too difficult to express or build in Google Sheets, one step above it is Google Colab (or any other Jupyter notebook). Before building a full blown app, I always ask myself: 1. can this just be a spreadsheet? If not, 2. can this just be a Jupyter notebook? And yes, the integration between Sheets and Colab is great…

Or Google Apps Script! You can get a long way with some simple scripts to import data, etc.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#85

Post by imgabe »

corry wrote: post #59

Always overlooked point in these pro/anti-spreadsheet discussions: A spreadsheet gives you a DB, a quickly and easily customized UI, and iterative / easy-to-debug data processing all in a package that everyone in the working world already understands. AND with a freedom that allows the creator to do it however they want. AND it's fairly portable. You can build incredible things in spreadsheets. I remain convinced tha…

I agree spreadsheets are amazing, but they are not databases. Much grief has been caused by trying to make them be one.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#86

Post by imgabe »

dotancohen wrote: post #82
corry wrote: post #59

Always overlooked point in these pro/anti-spreadsheet discussions: A spreadsheet gives you a DB, a quickly and easily customized UI, and iterative / easy-to-debug data processing all in a package that everyone in the working world already understands. AND with a freedom that allows the creator to do it however they want. AND it's fairly portable. You can build incredible things in spreadsheets. I remain convinced tha…

> especially so for people who can't code. Presumably those people learned to use a spreadsheet. What makes learning spreadsheet formulae possible, but SQL, Python, or R impossible?

nothing makes it impossible, but they already have Excel installed on their computer and they learned how to use it. Depending on where they work they may not be able to install Python or R or a database.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#87

Post by bdcravens »

dvh wrote: post #7

I haven't used Google sheets for maybe 2 years, didn't have the need, but week ago I needed to send customer a table that will be updated every couple of days. I was surprised how slow it is. Table has 40 lines and 8 columns, static text only, and it takes 12s until I can edit it. For what it is (adding sentence every 3 day) it's ok but if I had to actually use it for myself on a daily basis it would drive me mad.

Definitely something more going on, like some deeply nested functions.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#88

Post by ksec »

Slightly Off Topic, are there any other online SpreadSheets other than Excel 365 and Google Sheets?

Some of them are AirTable like which is CRM focus, but I just want a really simple spreadsheet that is easily accessible and not from Big Tech.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#89

Post by tclancy »

salviati wrote: post #3

Reminds me of "Ask HN: Is the world run by badly updated Excel sheets?" [0] You need experience to see the shorcomings of spreadsheets. No version control. No tests. In general it's good for things that don't need to evolve, but stay the same (most likely because they're short lived). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611431 [EDIT] An example of a comment from that thread pointing in this direction: > In gen…

Well yes, starting as a coder in the 2000s in the US, I always thought of my job as turning tortured spreadsheets sitting on a Windows network drive that have to be constantly babied by an underappreciated office staffer into web apps. But I do recognize that a lot of businesses have been run on spreadsheets and run well. There’s a scaling problem and when it hits, ideally you know and can move to an app, but perfect is the enemy of done.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#90

Post by clamorbeclam »

Funny, I recently departed from the google ecosystem to proton, self hosted nextcloud, kagi, Libreoffice, and Apple Maps. Am I giving up some ease of use? Absolutely! Can I live with it? Absolutely! Can google go fuck itself? Hell yea. Libre office is like missing a limb, but with practice it can do anything I want it to.
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