I only use Google Sheets • Hacker News Board

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#291

Post by breadwinner » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 10:07 PM UTC

compiler-guy wrote: post #281

breadwinner wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. You can't use SQL in Airtable even if you want to, it just doesn't support it. Also, Airtable is SaaS, you can't install it.

s/install/somehow obtain access/ Doesn’t really change the point. As of this writing, there are twenty-two comments on this thread about airtable. All but four are either you or responding to you bringing it up. I think it’s fair to say that whatever its advantages may be, it is relatively unknown, and therefore a higher-overhead entree into programming than straight up spreadsheets. Just learning about it or finding…

You are absolutely right and it makes sense to start with a spreadsheet. As I said elsewhere, you have to reach a 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.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#292

Post by LudwigNagasena » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 10:14 PM UTC

One of the biggest problems in business automation is the gaps between such low-effort “shadow” IT, low code platforms, and fully fledged out “proper” projects. The gap between “let’s make a google form” and “let’s build a react app with proper design, ci/cd, testing, cdn and so on” is too wide. There should be a bunch of intermediate steps there with a sensible migration path, but there are none, there are only walled garden alternatives that aren’t compatible with either.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#293

Post by FinnKuhn » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 10:17 PM UTC

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #292

One of the biggest problems in business automation is the gaps between such low-effort “shadow” IT, low code platforms, and fully fledged out “proper” projects. The gap between “let’s make a google form” and “let’s build a react app with proper design, ci/cd, testing, cdn and so on” is too wide. There should be a bunch of intermediate steps there with a sensible migration path, but there are none, there are only wall…

I would argue the intermediate step are SAAS solutions such as ERP or CRM systems. Most of them offer sensible export options as well.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#294

Post by invisblecitizen » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 10:17 PM UTC

This. I'm a huge fan sheets and built a bookmarking extension on it because it's free, portable, private, etc etc. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/quotebook/mcbjgbahg...

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#295

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 10:32 PM UTC

Scubabear68 wrote: post #123

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 would agree with you except the UI is so horrible. Give me a spreadsheet with a world cksss user interface and then you’ll have something!

Spreadsheet is the user interface.

Also what you're looking for is called Microsoft Excel. Every one else is doing webshit UIs which can't be world-class by definition, because they hardly scale to real workloads :).

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#296

Post by citizenpaul » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 10:33 PM UTC

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've always suspected if someone were to make a spreadsheet app that solves most spreadsheet problems it would collapse most companies.

As I see it the limitations of spreadsheets are what keep them from becoming the official way of doing things. At some point most of the stuff in the spreadsheets has data provenance in a properly managed IT system somewhere. If companies could get rid of this part of IT they would suddenly find themselves in a trillion dollar pit of lost money/inventory, As the spreadsheet mess spiraled out of control with no source of truth.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#297

Post by cassepipe » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 10:42 PM UTC

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).

Btw, anyone ever used Mathesar ? I saw it on the hn frontpage but I haven't tried it yet

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#298

Post by hahajk » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 10:46 PM UTC

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. However, so many of my use cases include a one-to-many relationship that I was outgrowing excel/sheets too quickly. Once a project added a VLOOKUP, it hit an inflection point in complexity.

I spun up a local Grist instance in my org, using SAML with our org's email authentication. It's intuitive enough that I've replaced a few shared spreadsheets with it (now with rowwise permissions) and powerful enough that I've also replaced a few internal CRUD apps.

https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#299

Post by kelnos » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 10:56 PM UTC

dcminter wrote: post #204

> I entered the workforce about 9 months ago Right or wrong, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to put forth such a definite opinion after less than a year in the workforce. What OP probably misses is the "there ain't nothing so permanent as a temporary solution" thing. I too embrace quick and dirty solutions but only if I have total control over the lifetime of that solution. If someone's going to ask me to deliv…

Yeah, that line made me nearly laugh out loud.

Not saying the author isn't onto something: using the simplest tool that will get your job done -- and bonus points if you can reasonably use the same tool for several things -- is a decent principle to live by. Using an existing tool is great, when it meets your needs without too many difficult trade offs.

And where they work, it seems like business requirements are scrapped and rewritten every couple months, so the whole "temporary-haha-yeah-right solution" problem doesn't really rear its head.

The rest of us have to deal with the difficult mess several years down the line, because "we'll throw it away and write a new thing once we need to scale" is something that very rarely actually happens.

Of course, the author has no experience of a year down the line, let alone several years down the line.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#300

Post by MattTheRealOne » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 11:06 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #270

floundy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on De-Googling. I now have a Mac and an iPhone instead of Windows/Android, but switching from Drive to iCloud seems a fairly parallel move. I also set up my first home server with RAID NAS. It's on my list to spin up an OpenOffice container or something I can use to replace Google Sheets. That will let me delete my Drive data; next is Google Photos and eventually Gmail.

Is your home server LAN only or have you configured it in some way to be accessible and secure on the internet? I'm interested in setting up a fileserver myself but I'm not sure what the latest is on security.

Tailscale is a great place to start. It uses a VPN to access your servers while outside of your LAN while avoiding the security risk of them being wide open to the internet.