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How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

blog.gingerbeardman.com

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Re: How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

#61

Post by theamk »

hyperbrainer wrote: post #29

Irrelevant but spreadsheets have always struck me as one of the most beautiful pieces of software that we use. Automatically updating calculations, programming logic complex anough for most ERPs, using it is a database, easy organisation of data, graphs -- it has it all. From both a user and developer perspective, they are one of the most diverse tools on a computer. MS may make terrible software sometimes, but damn…

And absolutely unique failure methods that no other languages exhibit.

How often you had a formula like SUM(B1:B20), and then someone added item 21 and suddenly the output is just slightly wrong? Or perhaps someone updated the formula but did not propagate the change to the last few cells?

There are no error messages, no warnings, just an output which is slightly wrong. Wrong enough to break whatever it's going to be used for, but close enough that cursory inspection does not notice it. Basically the worst failure mode an app can have.

Spreadsheets _could_ be beautiful if no one were to use them for tabular data. But people do, so they are a really horrible programming language. I bet people spent thousands of years of their life fixing spreadsheet mistakes that could not have happened in any other language.

Re: How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

#62

Post by pipes »

quacked wrote: post #60
pipes wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The windows 11 dir tree thing is a nightmare especially with one drive added in. Trying to find a file I've downloaded has become strangely difficult. Also word and excel seem hell bent on making it hard to save or find a file in a location you already know

I've just recently downloaded Explorer++ and am not looking back. It doesn't fix the directory tree, but it at least allows it to be navigated and displayed with more proficiency.

That looks great! Unfortunately I pretty much only use windows in work and I doubt I'll be allowed to install that

Re: How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

#63

Post by hyperbrainer »

kitd wrote: post #33
hyperbrainer wrote: post #29

Irrelevant but spreadsheets have always struck me as one of the most beautiful pieces of software that we use. Automatically updating calculations, programming logic complex anough for most ERPs, using it is a database, easy organisation of data, graphs -- it has it all. From both a user and developer perspective, they are one of the most diverse tools on a computer. MS may make terrible software sometimes, but damn…

Well, they're FP, in visual form. What's not to like?!

Now I wonder if I can make category theory diagrams in spreadsheets.

Re: How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

#64

Post by hyperbrainer »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #50
hyperbrainer wrote: post #29

Irrelevant but spreadsheets have always struck me as one of the most beautiful pieces of software that we use. Automatically updating calculations, programming logic complex anough for most ERPs, using it is a database, easy organisation of data, graphs -- it has it all. From both a user and developer perspective, they are one of the most diverse tools on a computer. MS may make terrible software sometimes, but damn…

Spreadsheets are one of the ugliest pieces of software that we use. Pretty much all of the paradigms spreadsheets enforce would be considered abhorrent in any other context. Excel needs five hundred megabytes of memory just to load a blank sheet. Vendor lock-in is just tolerated as a fact of life, as is the lack of a real way to integrate with version control, and a lack of human-readable source files. If an engineer…

> If an engineer came to you and said “So for this project, I put all the code, input data, output data and comments scattered about one big two-dimensional array with no type safety, no portability, no scalability, no security, no variable names, no code re-use, no unit tests, no integration tests, no abstractions and no error handling”

So, how is this different from engineers and MATLAB?

Re: How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

#65

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

hyperbrainer wrote: post #64
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spreadsheets are one of the ugliest pieces of software that we use. Pretty much all of the paradigms spreadsheets enforce would be considered abhorrent in any other context. Excel needs five hundred megabytes of memory just to load a blank sheet. Vendor lock-in is just tolerated as a fact of life, as is the lack of a real way to integrate with version control, and a lack of human-readable source files. If an engineer…

> If an engineer came to you and said “So for this project, I put all the code, input data, output data and comments scattered about one big two-dimensional array with no type safety, no portability, no scalability, no security, no variable names, no code re-use, no unit tests, no integration tests, no abstractions and no error handling” So, how is this different from engineers and MATLAB?

There are people who start new projects in MATLAB in 2025 for reasons other than ‘our expensive bespoke libraries only support MATLAB and it’d cost millions to rewrite them’?

Re: How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

#66

Post by zavec »

bigiain wrote: post #27
throwaway7783 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Balsamiq too and have been using it for 7 years now. For me it's the best way to define a product requirement, and share product ideas.

One day, I plan to release a mobile and web app that's a pixel perfect representation of my low fidelity Balsamiq wireframes/UXUI exploration. Just to make the right kind of people's head explode. In the same spirit as this from the late '90s: https://web.archive.org/web/20011102031149/http://www.mighty...

Oh that is a thing of beauty!

Re: How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

#67

Post by zavec »

zkmon wrote: post #10

I have used spreadsheets for designing floor plans and building elevation etc. I used each cell to represent 3 inch by 3 inch area. In more detail views I used each cell for a square inch area. Spreadsheets (specifically Excel) are the most general-purpose end-user software I have ever seen. I saw people using it for art/painting. Someone used it for demonstrating graphics shaders and ray-tracing.

Reminds me of somebody discovering their grandma referred to excel as "the knitting program" because she used it to mock up knitting patterns or something like that

Re: How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

#69

Post by eviks »

theamk wrote: post #61
hyperbrainer wrote: post #29

Irrelevant but spreadsheets have always struck me as one of the most beautiful pieces of software that we use. Automatically updating calculations, programming logic complex anough for most ERPs, using it is a database, easy organisation of data, graphs -- it has it all. From both a user and developer perspective, they are one of the most diverse tools on a computer. MS may make terrible software sometimes, but damn…

And absolutely unique failure methods that no other languages exhibit. How often you had a formula like SUM(B1:B20), and then someone added item 21 and suddenly the output is just slightly wrong? Or perhaps someone updated the formula but did not propagate the change to the last few cells? There are no error messages, no warnings, just an output which is slightly wrong. Wrong enough to break whatever it's going to be…

> no error messages, no warnings,

there are, you get a green corner in the formula cell telling you that adjacent cell isn't included

Re: How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet

#70

Post by eviks »

bayindirh wrote: post #38
zkmon wrote: post #10

I have used spreadsheets for designing floor plans and building elevation etc. I used each cell to represent 3 inch by 3 inch area. In more detail views I used each cell for a square inch area. Spreadsheets (specifically Excel) are the most general-purpose end-user software I have ever seen. I saw people using it for art/painting. Someone used it for demonstrating graphics shaders and ray-tracing.

My favorite tool for that kind of precision work is OmniGraffle. It can create label sheets and technical drawings with ease. The page [0] doesn't show it, but it can draw with millimeter precision for technical drawings. [0]: https://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle/

Can it sum up total width of your visual elements in a floor plan?
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