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I only use Google Sheets

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Re: I only use Google Sheets

#331

Post by cousin_it »

Someone wrote: post #302
cousin_it wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent some time with Apps Script a few weeks ago. It has some strange design decisions: 1) Everything runs on the server, including triggers and even custom functions! This means every script call requires a roundtrip, every cell using a custom function requires a roundtrip on each change, and it feels much slower than the rest of the UI. 2) You can't put a change trigger on a cell or subset of cells, only on the w…

> Everything runs on the server, including triggers I think that’s a consequence of the fact that multiple users can simultaneously edit a sheet. Yes, Google could special-case the “you are the single user of this sheet” case, but that’s extra work, and, I think, would be fairly complicated when handling edge cases where users frequently start and stop editing a sheet.

> I think that’s a consequence of the fact that multiple users can simultaneously edit a sheet.

No, it's not. Built-in functions like SUM recalculate instantly, and custom formatting rules (e.g. "color green if above zero") get applied instantly, even when there are multiple users editing a sheet. Running custom functions and triggers on the server is just a decision they made.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#332

Post by pjmlp »

Spivak wrote: post #168
mebizzle wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do we?

I never seen R being used, when Excel doesn't work out, it is something like Tableau instead.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#333

Post by Someone »

cousin_it wrote: post #331
Someone wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything runs on the server, including triggers I think that’s a consequence of the fact that multiple users can simultaneously edit a sheet. Yes, Google could special-case the “you are the single user of this sheet” case, but that’s extra work, and, I think, would be fairly complicated when handling edge cases where users frequently start and stop editing a sheet.

> I think that’s a consequence of the fact that multiple users can simultaneously edit a sheet. No, it's not. Built-in functions like SUM recalculate instantly, and custom formatting rules (e.g. "color green if above zero") get applied instantly, even when there are multiple users editing a sheet. Running custom functions and triggers on the server is just a decision they made.

Sum and custom formatting are idempotent. It doesn’t matter whether that gets run once, twice, or a hundred times.

Arbitrary AppScript isn’t guaranteed to be idempotent. You have to run it only once.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#334

Post by urbandw311er »

entropyie wrote: post #248

For those who hated the unmaintainable mega spreadsheet of death, MS Access was actually a quite decent solution. It allowed you to sprinkle some structure and maintainability onto a spreadsheet without losing the accessibility and ease of development. You could whip up really functional UIs without much coding knowledge. 20 years later and I still don't know what the replacement for Access is in today's world...

Amen. IMHO the equivalent nowadays would be AirTable - big fan of this, especially now they’ve added Interfaces which is the equivalent of the MS Access UI layer.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#335

Post by urbandw311er »

ebbi wrote: post #264
niam wrote: post #42

I'll die on this hill. Google Sheets was phenomenal for prototyping apps and getting quick feedback from users back when I used it in 2015-2020. Back then they had this janky implementation of Mozilla Rhino underpinning their "Apps Script" engine and it still beat the pants off of anything else you could use for free. Certainly you can shoot your feet with the various spreadsheet-isms but if you're diligent about kee…

Exactly this. Worked for a startup that had dogmatic leaders on 'using the best tool' 'spreadsheets are bad' (a trope they just got from people, not having used it themselves). Ended up spending thousands on consultants to build reporting etc that ended up needing to be changed after 6 months because of business/personnel changes. Spreadsheets are the best tool to quickly spin up and make changes to data. I've always…

Check out AirTable it’s exactly this. (Have mentioned it on two comments now, but I’m not affiliated with the company just a big fan)

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#336

Post by sjw987 »

brokenmachine wrote: post #309
sjw987 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took about a week for me to completely de-Google from scratch. Drive was easy enough to download everything off, but the real pain in the arse was Google Photos. I had something like 250 individual 2GB zip files and the supplementary metadata was separated off of the image files themselves. I had to put together some Python scripts to clean up all the different file naming formats over the years (PIXL_YYYYMMDD, IM…

Perhaps google takeout would have been easier?

That was Google Takeout! Although in retrospect I did find larger ZIP size options after doing the original export. But it filled Google Drive with 700GB of folders, so I just stuck with downloading the 2GB ones.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#337

Post by [deleted] »

TrackerFF wrote: post #22

One thing I've learned: Never ( ever ) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I…

[deleted]

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#338

Post by [deleted] »

Someone wrote: post #333
cousin_it wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that’s a consequence of the fact that multiple users can simultaneously edit a sheet. No, it's not. Built-in functions like SUM recalculate instantly, and custom formatting rules (e.g. "color green if above zero") get applied instantly, even when there are multiple users editing a sheet. Running custom functions and triggers on the server is just a decision they made.

Sum and custom formatting are idempotent. It doesn’t matter whether that gets run once, twice, or a hundred times. Arbitrary AppScript isn’t guaranteed to be idempotent. You have to run it only once.

[deleted]

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#339

Post by cousin_it »

Someone wrote: post #333
cousin_it wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that’s a consequence of the fact that multiple users can simultaneously edit a sheet. No, it's not. Built-in functions like SUM recalculate instantly, and custom formatting rules (e.g. "color green if above zero") get applied instantly, even when there are multiple users editing a sheet. Running custom functions and triggers on the server is just a decision they made.

Sum and custom formatting are idempotent. It doesn’t matter whether that gets run once, twice, or a hundred times. Arbitrary AppScript isn’t guaranteed to be idempotent. You have to run it only once.

This reason doesn't make much sense to me. Let's say I write a non-idempotent custom function. It makes the spreadsheet behave weirdly: recalculating a cell twice leads to a different effect than recalculating it once. Does it matter whether the function runs on the server or the client? No, the spreadsheet will behave weirdly in either case, even with just one user.

Can we make a programming language that will save developers from that? Maybe, but that would be very hard and that's not what Apps Script is trying to do. It already allows non-idempotence, trusting developers to write idempotent code when they need to. So it could run on the client just fine.

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