Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I only use Google Sheets

mayberay.bearblog.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 361 posts

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#141

Post by crazygringo »

weberer wrote: post #122
crazygringo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>You get a phone number for customer support, and it works. I don't believe this after decades of past experience with them trying to find any human to contact. Have you seen the phone number yourself? Normally they just give you the runaround trying to navigate a maze of support pages.

> Have you seen the phone number yourself?

Yes. Do you have a paid account? It's in the Google Admin console. It gives you a PIN to enter when you call.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#143

Post by breadwinner »

bluGill wrote: post #64
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 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!)

> I wish there was a better way to make spreadsheets use a database as a backend.

Here you go: https://visualdb.com/

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#144

Post by breadwinner »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #138
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've long wondered why there's not a more incremental transition path from spreadsheets to a full blown database with a custom UI. It just seems like spreadsheets are right on the cusp of being able to fill that that role but lack just a few key features which might make it viable (structured data, native SQL query support, custom UI elements, IDE integration, etc).

> incremental transition path from spreadsheets to a full blown database

There are plenty of tools for that. Airtable comes to mind, or if you want to use your own database try: https://visualdb.com/

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#145

Post by breadwinner »

imgabe wrote: post #85
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.

Have you not heard of spreadsheet-database hybrids? Like Airtable? Or if you want to use Postgres: https://visualdb.com

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#146

Post by mebizzle »

jader201 wrote: post #136
thesuitonym wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another oft overlooked point is that anti-spreadsheet people aren't actually against using spreadsheets, we just want our coworkers to stop placing mission critical operations in an enormous, half-baked spreadsheet that exists only in some long-since retired users home directory.

I see these complaints on HN a lot, and maybe it’s anecdotal, but I just don’t see this in the real world these days. If someone shares a sheet with me, it’s for the intended purpose of sharing data and/or visualizations of that data. I’ve always been a huge fan of spreadsheets, and the rare times I’ve encountered them being misused, it was a long time ago, and not near enough to make me an “anti-spreadsheet” person.…

This is anecdotal bias even now. The number of these monster spreadsheets running organizations that should be more sophisticated than they are would most likely keep anyone here up at night.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#147

Post by abruzzi »

jader201 wrote: post #136
thesuitonym wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another oft overlooked point is that anti-spreadsheet people aren't actually against using spreadsheets, we just want our coworkers to stop placing mission critical operations in an enormous, half-baked spreadsheet that exists only in some long-since retired users home directory.

I see these complaints on HN a lot, and maybe it’s anecdotal, but I just don’t see this in the real world these days. If someone shares a sheet with me, it’s for the intended purpose of sharing data and/or visualizations of that data. I’ve always been a huge fan of spreadsheets, and the rare times I’ve encountered them being misused, it was a long time ago, and not near enough to make me an “anti-spreadsheet” person.…

> I see these complaints on HN a lot, and maybe it’s anecdotal, but I just don’t see this in the real world these days.

It happens all the time where I work. I don't want to be specific, but we have lots of examples here. In some cases people don't like the core software, so they work around it by tracking things on a spreadsheet. And sometimes that spreadsheet disappears (in one case, it was being kept on an XLSX on a USB thumb drive, but the thumb drive got corrupted and we lost some very important data.)

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#149

Post by raybb »

Aachen wrote: post #125
raybb wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and don't forget signal is rolling out free cloud backup for texts so it should be making the process of backups even easier for non techy users.

How do I get it out of their cloud? It works as a backup to my phone, but I'd still want another copy that I can access regardless of whether I've got access to that phone number right now. Sorting that out with the carrier can take a while What's (to me) much more exciting to me is the incremental local backups they're working on. I've iirc looked into how to decode these big backup files, and copy them off my phone…

I assume the process is basically to restore from cloud on device and then export a local backup. But I don't recall them saying anything specific about that. The incremental backups do sound really nice.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#150

Post by jofer »

jader201 wrote: post #136
thesuitonym wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another oft overlooked point is that anti-spreadsheet people aren't actually against using spreadsheets, we just want our coworkers to stop placing mission critical operations in an enormous, half-baked spreadsheet that exists only in some long-since retired users home directory.

I see these complaints on HN a lot, and maybe it’s anecdotal, but I just don’t see this in the real world these days. If someone shares a sheet with me, it’s for the intended purpose of sharing data and/or visualizations of that data. I’ve always been a huge fan of spreadsheets, and the rare times I’ve encountered them being misused, it was a long time ago, and not near enough to make me an “anti-spreadsheet” person.…

This depends a lot on what you do. Try working with a decision analyst sometime. The entire economic model with a decision tree and monte carlo analysis of cost overruns, etc for a multi-trillion dollar decision will literally be a arcanely-complex spreadsheet or two on someone's laptop.

With that said, it's still a great tool for the job because the different stakeholders can inspect it.

Post reply on HN