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I only use Google Sheets

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Re: I only use Google Sheets

#161

Post by jfengel »

jasode wrote: post #126
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>Wasn't Microsoft Access basically that? No because the datagrid in MS Access is too rigid and doesn't have the extensive slice-&-dice features of MS Excel. My first consulting gig was creating customized MS Access applications. Despite that experience, I use MS Excel today because I know that MS Access is too limiting.

It sounds as if Excel has grown to incorporate most database features.

Does it have atomic transactions yet? That's the main thing keeping me using small databases like Access even when a mere spreadsheet would do otherwise.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#162

Post by criddell »

Mistletoe wrote: post #121

I’m about to leave Google Sheets because I keep very long spreadsheets about my life and everything I do and it refuses to open at anything but right at the top. So every time I have to scroll and scroll to get to the bottom. Does anyone have a fix for this? Last time I googled all I found was some dingleberry on a Google thread saying that’s how spreadsheets should open. I moved to Google Sheets from Excel online th…

Doesn't ctrl-end jump to the bottom row of the spreadsheet? Ctrl-down arrow will jump to the last cell in the current column. On a Mac it's cmd rather than ctrl I believe.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#163

Post by oaktowner »

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…

>>It's the best authoring tool we've ever devised.

100% agreed. Creating a spreadsheet is declarative programming, and Excel (and now Google Sheets) has made more developers than any other platform (probably by an order or two of magnitude).

I do not know a business that was not CRITICALLY dependent on Excel for actual business operations through the 90s and 00s...and the same is likely true today.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#164

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#165

Post by warkdarrior »

clamorbeclam wrote: post #90

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.

You have self-hosted Kagi? How?

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#166

Post by Pooge »

mixcocam wrote: post #24

"Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that cr…

> Start with a gsheet, when it breaks build something else.

Absolutely don't. The one who built the spreadsheet will have changed companies and the "business logic" and the knowledge will be gone with them. You're now stuck with a blackbox that no ones knows the specs of but everybody depends on.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#167

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #164
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…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#168

Post by Spivak »

mebizzle wrote: post #154
dotancohen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Telling everyone to learn Python to solve all of their problems is not a legitimate or realistic suggestion or solution.

Why? We expect huge swaths of non-programmers to learn R to work with data. Seems like it just depends on the field. If Excel was an integrated Python environment (or VBA or whatever pick your language) then I bet users would have learned it all the same. Twenty years later I bet HN would be full of complaints about how people have a hard time transitioning to "real" Python because they learned the Excel flavor.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#169

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

thesuitonym wrote: post #100
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…

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.

As opposed to placing the mission critical operations in some huge enterprise Java deployment which has been touched by thousands of contractors, all of whom have only a very rudimentary understanding of the actual business logic.

I think even a complicated spreadsheet that can be directly edited and modified by the actual business stakeholders is preferred.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#170

Post by fsckboy »

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 never loved nor hated hypercard. it was straightforward and clever but i really only used it for one thing: i made cardstock labels and liner notes for my audio cassette "rips" of albums (my 20mb hard disk (we didn't have MiBs then) wasn't going to hold many mp3's ;)

i might have used it for burned CDs too, I can't remember. at work i had access to burning CDs at scale back then, I just don't remember when the blanks became cheap enough that nobody would notice my pilfering and and whether i still used my mac. i did burn disk backups to CDs

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