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I only use Google Sheets

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Re: I only use Google Sheets

#251

Post by jacobr1 »

abruzzi wrote: post #147
jader201 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The availability angle changes things quite a bit. Having a single source of truth online sheet is much different than a file that is passed around.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#252

Post by zenlot »

I've recently removed the fancytooling out of my pipeline, and re-done Jira on LibreOffice's Calc.

And with native python it has, I can query snapshots from Jira, add inputs etc.

So much simpler, you open Calc's window and just hop faaaast through sheets. Rather than opening your browser, typing URL, entering Jira, getting into correct board etc.

Need a to-do list? There too, just another sheet. Need to track your deployments? Just pull it into yet another sheet.

The sheet is everything you really need.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#253

Post by zenmac »

actuallyalys wrote: post #103
ksec wrote: post #88

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.

I’ve mostly used LibreOffice for personal use and other cases where I don’t want to use Big Tech, but you could try OnlyOffice. I’ve also been interested in Grist, which is more like AirTable but programmed in Python and (relevant to your request) self-hostable. Edit: Depending on your reasons for avoiding big tech, you may want to research the owner of Only Office, which was a Russian company but apparently isn’t an…

What's cool about CryptPad is all the data is encrypted behind the # tag key which never gets sent to server. So even the server admin don't have access to the user docs. It has being easy to migrate from server to server.

A truly shining example to google doc alternative.

It would be great to have some kind of syncthing cryptpad drive, then it can be very nice alternative to even dropbox. Not sure what the development is ATM.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#254

Post by rhinoceraptor »

The HN perennial video, "You Suck at Excel" by Joel Spolsky [1] really changed my view on spreadsheets. I had never bothered to learn them enough to utilize naming or any of the features that make spreadsheets much more comprehensible. I was very happy to see Google Sheets added named tables recently, too.

I've recently been experimenting in Apps Script to write my own (physical) book collection record system with a USB barcode scanner. So far I have nothing polished enough to show, but it is a very cool platform. I found it a bit frustrating that I couldn't just import NPM packages, but at the same time it's a good excuse to embrace simplicity and skip a library like Axios, and rely on its built-in fetch()-like API.

1: The original YouTube video has since been taken down, but you can still view it through the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161118170705/https://www.youtu...

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#255

Post by bobson381 »

gregates wrote: post #209
immibis wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels a bit like the no-code paradox though. When you make a sufficiently advanced no-code (or no-database) tool it becomes equivalent to code (or a database) and even though it does entice a novice to start using it, a complex system made in it is still complex code (or a complex database) and ends up requiring a competent programmer (or db admin) to maintain it, who wishes it was written the normal way to begin wit…

I have no doubt that the stories of complex spreadsheet models as the beating heart of a business are true. But those models are likely the sole survivor from a thousand dead and gone spreadsheets that people extracted value from for a time, but just didn't have the ongoing utility or wide enough audience to merit being turned into a dashboard or web app. It would be a mistake to insist that all of those spreadsheets…

And then the attached part of this that you mentioned is that the cursed survivors have essentially outcompeted their peers for survival. They're winners of a genetic algorithm whose basis is company data. They have close contact with actual reality, and have been beaten carefully into shape by it. I have kind of a grudging respect for these because of that, actually.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#256

Post by array_key_first »

sokoloff wrote: post #198
goostavos wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the surprising things about working inside of $MegaCorp is that if you knock on enough doors, you'll eventually find that each org has, like, one dude* with a spread sheet that powers everything else. Teams will get spun up to try to "automate" this spreadsheet, but, on a long enough time horizon, the spreadsheet wins.

Similar to the author’s cases: I’ve sat through several presentations of small teams who worked for 6-10 weeks to create a web app that does something (the details vary slightly from case to case) where at the end of the presentation, my first thought is “what a waste of effort and money; that would have taken 2-4 hours if they’d just used a spreadsheet”.

This speaks more to the complexity of web and web development than as a pro of spreadsheets.

You can create a super quick Python app with visualization and whatnot in about the same time as a spreadsheet. But then it's not online. And it's not best practice.

Web is just a fucking beast and then developers go in and add additional complexity.

It would probably be a much simpler web app if you made it just, like, a bunch of PHP scripts thrown in a folder. But they won't do that.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#257

Post by array_key_first »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #169
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.

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.

The main problem is that a complex spreadsheet is just code. Its a bundle of logic and data. That's code.

If the business stakeholders can edit said spreadsheet, they can code. Not well probably, but they can.

So, theoretically, they should be able to open a python script or whatever and hack away. A lot of calculations are actually much easier and straightforward in a real language as opposed to Excel.

But they won't, partially because developers would never let them.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#258

Post by Tepix »

I like what the author is writing. For the listed use cases, grist might be the better tool. It would also return control over your data back to you if you self-hist it (which is easy).

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#259

Post by nextaccountic »

analog31 wrote: post #196
breadwinner wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to give them a tool that's as easy to use as a spreadsheet, and yet stores data in a relational database. There are plenty of spreadsheet-database hybrids in the market.

Using any tool but Excel has the same problem as finding programmers who are willing to use some obscure proprietary programming language. They're going to worry about career lock if they're not developing portable skills. Even though Excel is proprietary too, it's ubiquitous enough that people don't have to worry about it.

What about a tool that tracks updates to shared Excel spreadsheet and replicate them in a SQL database?

And then, if somebody makes a change in the database, a trigger will update the spreadsheet

Such a two-way binding makes it possible to continue relying on spreadsheets for UX, all the while the data is not locked in there and we can also have other processes handling the data (a web app, some cron job, etc)

Maybe market it as an API for excel or something

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#260

Post by rictic »

gregates wrote: post #172
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.

As someone who has been to multiple trade shows to show off our own spreadsheet product that solves some of these problems ( https://rowzero.io/home ), I can tell you there are a bunch of data engineers and their managers who have a visceral hatred of spreadsheets but have trouble articulating any reason for it.

I love spreadsheets for casual stuff, but my concerns with using them for anything heavy duty are twofold: change management and correctness testing.

Other software that I use and write is version controlled and has tests to catch errors, mistakes, typos. Those tests regularly find and prevent problems! Likewise version control.

Could we get the same with spreadsheets? Seems difficult but not conceptually impossible, particularly with LLM assistance.

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