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

231–240 of 361 posts

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#231

Post by bonoboTP »

CrulesAll wrote: post #174
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…

Poe's law. If you use a spreadsheet as a DB for any sort of application, you should be tarred and feathered, and never infect any engineering team ever. Your 'trifles' are the biggest screw-ups from functionality to INFOSEC.

MS Excel is much much much much more accessible to the normal office worker than MS Access. It's not even close. As a kid, most of us intuitively picked up Excel but Access was a mystery even with a teacher in computer class trying to teach us the basics. Later I learned SQL to create websites, and graduated with a good CS degree, but the learning curve is uncomparable.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#232

Post by bonoboTP »

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.

The gap in conceptual complexity to switch to databases is just way too high for most people. One lets them accomplish the business goal, the other does not.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#233

Post by mixcocam »

jmkd wrote: post #41

Xoogler here. For my five years we only used Sheets (called Trix internally) for everything from project management, CRM, quarterly planning, reporting, interviewing, finances and so on. This was not because it was a Google product (we used plenty of competitors' products) but because it is so easy to make them good enough for the task that you can move on to getting the job done instead of administrating getting the…

I have heard that at google collaboration happens with: - making lists (google groups) - gsheets - basic real time chat with auto disappear

Is that the case? I find that super interesting. No sexy Slack or Teams type of thing?

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#234

Post by Spooky23 »

IAmBroom wrote: post #139
Spooky23 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard a rant about people being banned, but i can think of a half dozen people who have lost their icloud accounts due to the combo of inexplicably not remembering or writing down their passwords and selling or losing a phone.

How is that different from losing access to, say, your own computer by the same route? That's entirely different from another entity denying you access to your data.

People have investments in things like itunes, apps, etc.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#235

Post by mbesto »

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…

True story - I know a guy who built an application using Excel for tracking toll charges for car rentals back in the early 2000's. Over time he built out a team and an application. Piece by piece he automated things, but he initially did everything by hand, tracked it in Excel and printed it in PDFs out to his customers for reconciliation.

He sold the business for $400M. No outside capital, he was the only owner.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#236

Post by breadwinner »

pletnes wrote: post #213
breadwinner wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say Airtable is. Or if your users are slightly more technical you can try https://visualdb.com/ because it lets you use your own Postgres instance as the backend db.

I’ve used Airtable a bit. I think it’s really cool and would like more people to use it. However, it’s a lot more clicks and key presses to get things done - especially data entry - than in Excel. This also makes it better, since you can put constraints on tables, for instance.

You are absolutely right about needing more clicks and key strokes in Airtable. You have to reach the pain threshold in order to look for alternatives to Excel. And how soon you reach the pain threshold depends on how big your data is and how many users are trying to modify the same data at the same time.

See here to understand what you are missing out by not using a database: https://visualdb.com/comparison/#integrity

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#237

Post by emeril »

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.

so true - as the spreadsheet "guru" at most of my employers - most of the issues with spreadsheets is misuse which is very common sadly

though, much programming is poor and often can be accomplished better in a spreadsheet given the situation and use case...

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#238

Post by mstkllah »

breadwinner wrote: post #185
gregates wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are any of them as easy to use as a spreadsheet?

I would say Airtable is. Or if your users are slightly more technical you can try https://visualdb.com/ because it lets you use your own Postgres instance as the backend db.

I feel quite comfortable in Excel - used various tools like Power Pivot, Power Query, OLEDB, created my own functions, Python within Excel, etc. - but Airtable felt so confusing and limiting. Other former colleagues also struggled with Airtable; maybe it was not explained to us correctly.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#239

Post by mrbonner »

I used to work in a really big bank. One of our primary responsibility is to "convert" trade algorithm from spreadsheet to an actual production program/code. The usability of spreadsheet to show a concept quickly is great. But it is a nightmare to have to understand and debug during the conversion.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#240

Post by raybb »

Aachen wrote: post #132
edoceo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any good tools for automatic backup of these things? How would a non-tech-type do it?

There's sadly no silver bullet, especially for non-techies. To me it's like buying vegan products where available: I can't trivially become vegan with no effort, but I can affect market forces by preferentially buying things that align with that ideal. People could at least apply this where possible and buy products where they're in control somehow For storage platforms like Dropbox or Onedrive, it can be as simple a…

Perhaps there's a market for this. An automated or semi-automated backup of many cloud services. It could probably be as simple as doing a gdpr request in some cases.
Post reply on HN