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I only use Google Sheets

mayberay.bearblog.dev

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Re: I only use Google Sheets

#111

Post by actuallyalys »

jeffbee wrote: post #102
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.

I manage all the information for every parcel in my city in Google Sheets. It is > 29k rows x dozens of columns and it is instantly interactive when I visit the bookmarked URL.

Do you work for local government? I’ve heard of cities using Excel for this but not Sheets (although I’m not surprised).

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#112

Post by conductr »

Romario77 wrote: post #91
Zigurd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google suite of Apps was born multiuser. They perform better then Microsoft's apps when multiple people, even dozens of them, are bashing on a single shared document. Document sharing is more powerful than sharing a window or a desktop. It changes the way people work together.

yes, that's true. It also brings the issues related to that - it's easy to delete the whole org data, change things uncontrollably, corrupt the data, there entries in the tables are free-form (well, you have to do programming to make it more robust). it works fine initially, but for long term it's usually more productive to have custom software.

> it's usually more productive to have custom software.

If you multiplied the custom software development effort and cost to the multitude of places and use cases people in an organization are using spreadsheets I think you’d quickly find that it’s infeasible. And that’s not even taking into account how much value the adhoc-ability of spreadsheets adds to the equation. Most spreadsheets can be completely refactored or thrown away in a rather trivial manner. The sprint nature of software development screens out most things that could be spreadsheets. I’ll build it in an hour instead of waiting 2 weeks to get on the next sprint.

The software development process is too rigid for rapidly changing business needs. Having to spec out requirements and such is often an unknown and something you’re doing live in the moment when creating the spreadsheet itself.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#113

Post by eirikbakke »

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?

Spreadsheet formulas have a very simple grammar: expression = reference | exp1 op exp2 | function(exp1, ..., expN)

That's it. It's the math notation from high school, plus cell references, which can be inserted by clicking a cell.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#115

Post by dahcryn »

piltdownman wrote: post #109
velcrovan wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spreadsheet gives you a DB Yeah a DB where any user can accidentally hit the spacebar and erase a formula, and never see any warning that their outputs are now horribly inaccurate.

Data > Protect sheets and ranges, choose Protect range or Protect sheet, and then click Set permissions to customize who can edit them. What Problem?

and they save versions every edit or every few minutes too. It's free version control that you cannot forget to turn on

Huge contrast with MS approach to this

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#116

Post by patrickscoleman »

Only tangentially on-topic, but I do all the financial modeling for the past several (early stage) startups I've worked for in Google Sheets.

The ease, collaboration/sharing, and array formulas win out over the faster speed for calculations, better shortcuts, cross-workbook linking, and customization in Excel.

That said, it's been a few years since I've tried Excel so would love to hear someone convince me to try it again.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#117

Post by patrickscoleman »

crazygringo wrote: post #58
TrackerFF wrote: post #22

One thing I've learned: Never ( ever ) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I…

I assume you're talking about the free consumer tier? Nothing like that should happen if you're paying for even an individual Workspace plan. You get a phone number for customer support, and it works. Google shuts down free accounts when it believes they're being used for fraud/spam. And because scammers and spammers create them at virtually zero cost, and will fake activity to build account credibility until using t…

The worst customer support experiences of my life have been from Google, both while using Google Fi personally and GCP while working at Replit in its early days. Thankfully I'm no longer using either of those products now.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#118

Post by toast0 »

crazygringo wrote: post #58
TrackerFF wrote: post #22

One thing I've learned: Never ( ever ) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I…

I assume you're talking about the free consumer tier? Nothing like that should happen if you're paying for even an individual Workspace plan. You get a phone number for customer support, and it works. Google shuts down free accounts when it believes they're being used for fraud/spam. And because scammers and spammers create them at virtually zero cost, and will fake activity to build account credibility until using t…

> Nothing like that should happen if you're paying for even an individual Workspace plan. You get a phone number for customer support, and it works.

Last I was a workspace Admin, you had to login to get the phone number and the code to dial once you called.

It certainly did get you to a human. Unfortunately, they were not empowered to actually help with any of the things I needed help with, even when it would just be filing a enhancement request with the product team (they just tell you to post in the unmonitored product forum)

I've seen several believable tales of Kafkaesque billing issues leading to Workspace accounts being suspended. It took months to get them to do invoice billing.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#119

Post by praestigiare »

Spooky23 wrote: post #77
throwuxiytayq wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of reports of people getting locked out of their Workspace accounts. Google even occasionally burns developers they have deals and working relationships with. Just don't use any Google services. Not free, not paid (why would you send them money???!?!). Not for personal stuff, not for work projects. Not for throwaway data, not for important data.

The Google rage on HN is immature. That's a feature of any SaaS. Adobe frequently shuts down ETLA customers due their own invoice processing failures. I can think of three significant government subdivisions that were unable to access any M365 service for 1-10 days as a result of a reseller change. The real lesson here is that you need to understand the failure domains of the technology your business depends on. Your…

The real lesson here is that almost all modern SaaS applications have massively under invested in customer support in order to appear more profitable or sustainable than they really are. One of the major factors behind LLM development is trying to solve this problem before the house of cards falls down. Companies were enticed by the recurring revenue of SaaS, but don't want to pay for the level of support required when you are responsible for all your customers data as well as their access to the service.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#120

Post by sroerick »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #66
bluGill wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was a better way to make spreadsheets use a database as a backend. Most of what people do with a spreadsheet would be better done in a database - but a database needs a lot more training to use (if you don't have the training you will make something worse than spreadsheet with your database!)

Wasn't Microsoft Access basically that? There's also Google's AppSheet, which may be that too.

You know, I used Retool a lot, and it made me think that I'd actually really like a modern Microsoft Access.

Kind of an open source Google Forms/ Access where you could deploy front ends very quickly and have it hit a DB

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