I only use Google Sheets • Hacker News Board

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#351

Post by themadturk » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 10:50 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #82

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…

> 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?

Most people who have access to a spreadsheet don't have access to a compiler or interpreter, or the desire or time to learn them if they do. Most people learn what they need to do their jobs, and then go home and forget about it until the next day.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#352

Post by themadturk » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 10:53 PM UTC

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.

And yet...they are often used as databases, successfully.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#353

Post by MattTheRealOne » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 11:02 PM UTC

floundy wrote: post #345

MattTheRealOne wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So the way I understand Tailscale is that it's built on top of Wireguard; Tailscale claims it's "easier to use" but I haven't found Wireguard to be difficult to configure at all. Are there any extra benefits to using Tailscale that I'm overlooking?

Yes, Tailscale uses Wireguard. If you can use Wireguard, that is great. That is not an option for many people who are behind a CGNAT and/or do not have the ability to setup port forwarding. Tailscale also makes it easier for sharing access with other users.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#354

Post by themadturk » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 11:08 PM UTC

ubermonkey wrote: post #98

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 didn't realize it at the time, but I my first encounter with the "solves every problem with a spreadsheet" user type came very early in my career. I worked in a computer lab in college, ca. 1989. One of my colleagues was in the mechanical engineering program, and had a bias generally for "solve the problem" over "elegant solution" or "appropriate tool" concerns. (I love the guy to this day, to be clear.) When he fi…

I worked at a law firm where the chief accountant (not the accounting manager, but the guy who made most of it work) did everything in Excel...including writing memos and other documents. I think the only other program he used was Outlook, and he probably drafted email in Excel.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#355

Post by Pooge » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 5:36 AM UTC

wewtyflakes wrote: post #347

Pooge wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A spreadsheet doesn't scale, is easily lost or corrupted or stolen, doesn't have security and people that tend to use it don't add data validation and don't care about atomic properties or data consistency.

These are different reasons than given previously. Regardless, Google Sheets are automatically versioned and have extensive access controls, both at the document level, and cell level. Further still, these types of documents are not black boxes, since anyone with access can inspect the data themselves. Arguments regarding scale and atomic operations/properties/consistency are fine, though I do not believe all busines…

Let's qualify spreadsheets as software: critical software should not be made by a non-technical person that doesn't know software engineering principles.

I guess Google Sheets invalidates some of my arguments, but Excel certainly does not. And, even if the feature is there, I've never seen them applied.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#356

Post by drumdance » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

My very first programming job was with Quattro Pro spreadsheet. It was a great introduction for someone who was self-taught and pre-internet.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#357

Post by break_the_bank » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 10:50 PM UTC

This is a very interesting read, we are building Cursor for Google Sheets and the variance of use-cases we see is insane.

1. A lot of people are creating dashboards / CRMs - either they don't have any one selling them verticalized Software or its too expensive. 2. Some people have verticalized Software and they use Sheets so that they can share data with others without paying for per seat SaaS while not worrying about what the new members can read/write into 3. Lots of financial modeling and planning - From a chain of Cafe's in Laos, to Startups raising funding. 4. Lots of teachers trying to do scheduling for their school while ensuring that the teachers get enough of a break. We have seen this in Colombia, the US and Italy 5. A lot of market research and enrichment

A Spreadsheet really is the IDE of a billion people. You can try us here https://tabtabtab.ai/

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#358

Post by curioussquirrel » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 7:55 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #156

Romario77 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, that's true. It also brings the issues related to that - it's easy to delete the whole org data, change things uncontrollably, corrupt the data, there entries in the tables are free-form (well, you have to do programming to make it more robust). it works fine initially, but for long term it's usually more productive to have custom software.

Google Workspace apps all (?) have versioning.

This is true, but sadly for very large spreadsheets, it kind of stops working at a certain point. You get timeouts when loading cell history or the version of the spreadsheet version history.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#359

Post by caoxhua » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 8:08 PM UTC

sixhobbits wrote: post #69

Same, I currently have - My own rough business accounting (download all bank statements and do some pivots and graphing. Real accountants do the real thing, but I like to have a version that makes sense to me and that is up to date) - Personal accounting finance tracking for sharing expenses and tracking living costs over time - Consolidated asset tracking across different projects/accounts etc, just a quick summary…

Have you heard of Fina Money? SpreadSheet works, but Fina tries to make it easier to analyze and visualize your finance data from sheets + live banks. It solves the problems you mentioned.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#360

Post by caoxhua » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 8:14 PM UTC

Excel/Spreadsheet are best invented software ever.

However, the other side of this double-edge sword is its fragility, when data or logic grow in complexity, it raises more errors than it should. That's when a niche product gets its chance to chime in.