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Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

slateforexcel.com

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Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#61

Post by andrewflnr »

zackmorris wrote: post #49
crrashby wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, maybe one day...

You are just a small step away from the concepts in Subtext: http://www.subtext-lang.org I highly recommend watching the screencasts, especially the demo: http://www.subtext-lang.org/demo1.html I have wanted a graphical interface for functional programming in environments like Excel for a long time. In my experience, most of the pseudo-programming that has dominated software engineering (object-oriented/MVC/message-b…

  ...nobody has successfully made functional code approachable
I'm not totally sure what to make of this statement. I think of functional programming as an extension of the expression-based computation almost everyone (in the first world anyway) learns in pre-algebra. What could be more approachable?

Yet I always have trouble recommending a specific functional language to someone who's curious. I'd say scheme if sexprs weren't so intimidating, ocaml if the syntax weren't so annoying, Haskell if it weren't, well, Haskell (not that I've really used Haskell myself). So for now I just tell people to learn Python and show them map() and closures.

Is there a semi-practical functional language with C-ish call syntax, especially with dynamic typing? And don't tell me Javascript, that's still mostly imperative. Rust seems close (closer than Python at least). I might start recommending that when it stabilizes.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#62

Post by nether »

I was JUST thinking about something like this a week ago. I termed it "formula explorer" and was going to ask some people if something like it was in Excel 2013 (at work we're on 2003). This would be great for my mechanical engineering work. We often have formulas that reference many sheets with many constituent formulas. To check them I usually have to create another sheet that shows the flow of values concisely on one sheet, basically a manual version of what Slate does. This tool would automate that, looks fantastic.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#63

Post by bchallenor »

zackmorris wrote: post #57
bchallenor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Subtext screencast is fascinating - thanks for posting the link. Reminds me of the Bret Victor talks. I agree with your other points - this is something I'd love to build (or see built). But do you think it could displace Excel?

I'm not sure if anything will displace Excel (or spreadsheets in general). But what I'd like to see is a generalization beyond columns/rows/sheets for relating data of various dimensions. The underlying data type would probably be a list (so lisp) but have options to enable order, array access, key->value access, etc. Cell references would work more like in programming languages and operate over ranges that aren't ju…

Yes this is close to what I was thinking of. Basically I want a tool for manipulating ad-hoc collections (lists/sets) of data. Something that is as powerful as SQL (but easy to set up for throwaway pipelines), as accessible as Excel (but not as restrictive - Excel forces you to work in two-dimensional projections of your actual data), that interfaces well with standard formats (JSON, CSV, Excel) and data sources (grep, find, REST, SQL, log files).

For example, say I want to make a wiki page to track some kind of code migration project. Currently I might grep for usages of a term, and project out the (module name, term) pairs. I then run this query a few times for different terms, and use Excel to merge and pivot the data so the first column is a module name and the remaining columns mark occurrences of each term. I then copy paste into Vim and use a regex to mangle the data into wiki markup.

There is surely a better way of doing this, using a single tool to glue the steps together so that the pipeline is repeatable and the various steps are individually reusable.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#65

Post by epo »

The problem with Excel spreadsheets is that the overwhelming majority of users are not programmers or engineers, they are clerical workers with no real understanding of what they are doing. Knowledge, such as it is, is passed on in a monkey see, monkey do, fashion, producing imitation without insight.

This proposed tool is for engineers, not clerks. You download it and use it locally right? Because if it requires the spreadsheet to be uploaded then that is another technical hurdle and one which breaches most people's security requirements.

Excel already does most of this, the problem is that people can't comprehend what it is telling them, your tool is no different.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#66

Post by newman314 »

bchallenor wrote: post #63
zackmorris wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if anything will displace Excel (or spreadsheets in general). But what I'd like to see is a generalization beyond columns/rows/sheets for relating data of various dimensions. The underlying data type would probably be a list (so lisp) but have options to enable order, array access, key->value access, etc. Cell references would work more like in programming languages and operate over ranges that aren't ju…

Yes this is close to what I was thinking of. Basically I want a tool for manipulating ad-hoc collections (lists/sets) of data. Something that is as powerful as SQL (but easy to set up for throwaway pipelines), as accessible as Excel (but not as restrictive - Excel forces you to work in two-dimensional projections of your actual data), that interfaces well with standard formats (JSON, CSV, Excel) and data sources (gre…

I've been dreaming of a general purpose tool using Excel as a front-end and being able to dynamically manipulate backend data for different presentation.

For example, an asset management database. If I can use this to generate different free form queries, it would be something I would totally throw money at.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#67

Post by crrashby »

bchallenor wrote: post #63
zackmorris wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if anything will displace Excel (or spreadsheets in general). But what I'd like to see is a generalization beyond columns/rows/sheets for relating data of various dimensions. The underlying data type would probably be a list (so lisp) but have options to enable order, array access, key->value access, etc. Cell references would work more like in programming languages and operate over ranges that aren't ju…

Yes this is close to what I was thinking of. Basically I want a tool for manipulating ad-hoc collections (lists/sets) of data. Something that is as powerful as SQL (but easy to set up for throwaway pipelines), as accessible as Excel (but not as restrictive - Excel forces you to work in two-dimensional projections of your actual data), that interfaces well with standard formats (JSON, CSV, Excel) and data sources (gre…

All these suggestions would make for a really powerful tool. The issue is how to make it all approachable to non-coders. Almost all the excel users I've talked to don't know how to make macros let alone any more complex code. I think the issue is trying to make these concepts understandable and usable to everyone so users can get started straight away.

Right now companies don't send their employees on VBA courses even though they could work some much more efficiently with a basic knowledge of coding.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#68

Post by crrashby »

epo wrote: post #65

The problem with Excel spreadsheets is that the overwhelming majority of users are not programmers or engineers, they are clerical workers with no real understanding of what they are doing. Knowledge, such as it is, is passed on in a monkey see, monkey do, fashion, producing imitation without insight. This proposed tool is for engineers, not clerks. You download it and use it locally right? Because if it requires the…

Almost all Excel users are not programmers, you're definitely right. If by clerical workers you mean people who are just entering data into the sheet or reading an output then, yes, they don't need to understand what the sheet is doing.

However there are loads of people who build there own sheets: analysts, consultants, managers, marketing, accountants and yes engineers. These are the people who spend the most time using excel. Excel let's you build a very complex model formula by formula. It's often a model more complex than you might be able to map out initially. Whilst they are not programmers they are still smart enough to understand the sheets they've built. The issue is Excel right now is so opaque about what its doing and where the numbers come from. It makes this task much harder than it needs to be.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#69

Post by crrashby »

cdcarter wrote: post #40
crrashby wrote: post #2

I've been working on this myself and would really love to get some feedback. Would this be useful for the problems you have with Excel?

How do you plan to support links between documents. The place I work at now has a very complex budgeting process where each department sends my office their budget spreadsheets and we link them all into an overview that also does things like calculating benefits payments and taxes. There's a lot that can go wrong in that process, and every time I go back and look at a submitted version I find some mistake someone mis…

Slate will show the cells that are in another document but referenced by the current sheet. However, it would not show any further levels of referenced cells.

So say I reference the value "Total Sales" which is in another sheet. That would show in the the tree but the individual sales that contribute to the total would not be shown.

We wanted people to know where the numbers are coming from but at the same time keep the trees for different sheets and files separate to prevent them becoming too unwieldy and hard to understand.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#70

Post by gadders »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #60
crrashby wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK I've disabled the autoplay again. I was just trying to get people to watch the video.

Oh don't you dare! Run an a/b test first, before you disable autoplay. If autoplay gets more signups then keep it. You're not here to be our friend and drink tea, you're running a business. From a design point of view, I LOVE your desaturated forest look with the logo. It's all very memorable

Fair point. My miserableness may not be typical.
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