Google Spreadsheets and Python
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Google Spreadsheets and Python
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Re: Google Spreadsheets and Python
#2I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications, e.g. to read and write to databases. Bit like MS Access used to do.
Google Spreadsheets actually goes a long way (I've done some stuff using the IF function etc. in it), but obviously has its limits. So combining it with Python sounds interesting. Not sure if it's what I'm looking for, but I'll check it out.
Re: Google Spreadsheets and Python
#3I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications, e.g. to read and write to databases. Bit like MS Access used to do. Google Spreadsheets actually goes a long way (I've done some stuff using the IF function etc. in it), but obviously has its limits. So combining it with Python sounds interesting. Not sure if i…
Quickbase does that, but the pricing model doesn't work well for all use cases.
Edit: DabbleDB was awesome, and easier to learn than quickbase. But Twitter acquihired them and shut it down.
Re: Google Spreadsheets and Python
#4I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications, e.g. to read and write to databases. Bit like MS Access used to do. Google Spreadsheets actually goes a long way (I've done some stuff using the IF function etc. in it), but obviously has its limits. So combining it with Python sounds interesting. Not sure if i…
Have you seen AirTable? It's definitely the best modern alternative to Access I've seen - easy to create tables, great web UI and a phenomenal iOS mobile app.
Re: Google Spreadsheets and Python
#5I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications, e.g. to read and write to databases. Bit like MS Access used to do. Google Spreadsheets actually goes a long way (I've done some stuff using the IF function etc. in it), but obviously has its limits. So combining it with Python sounds interesting. Not sure if i…
Salesforce often ends up filling this gap in organizations that can afford it, but often results in a technical debt of layman-designed schemas persisting long into production. (cleaning up or directly working with SF data is an expensive nightmare in my experience even post-Heroku acquisition)
You are correct that a modern MS Access alternative would certainly find its market.
Re: Google Spreadsheets and Python
#6Having run an (internal) app that is deeply integrated with Google Sheets for about a year, I think that Sheets is good and bad. It's _extremely_ powerful for allowing business users to easily get access to and manipulate data manually. Downside is that it really struggles past a few thousand rows when you've got more than 20 or so columns. Definitely good for a quick and dirty way to expose data to internal users, but it essentially can't scale. Engineers need to be ready to move off of it if the system works.
Re: Google Spreadsheets and Python
#7I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications, e.g. to read and write to databases. Bit like MS Access used to do. Google Spreadsheets actually goes a long way (I've done some stuff using the IF function etc. in it), but obviously has its limits. So combining it with Python sounds interesting. Not sure if i…
Have you seen AirTable? It's definitely the best modern alternative to Access I've seen - easy to create tables, great web UI and a phenomenal iOS mobile app. https://www.airtable.com
thanks, did not know this.
Re: Google Spreadsheets and Python
#8Having run an (internal) app that is deeply integrated with Google Sheets for about a year, I think that Sheets is good and bad. It's _extremely_ powerful for allowing business users to easily get access to and manipulate data manually. Downside is that it really struggles past a few thousand rows when you've got more than 20 or so columns. Definitely good for a quick and dirty way to expose data to internal users, b…
I've found that it also chokes when you throw Google Apps Scripts at it; or at least it did when I was developing a mail merge app for a Real Estate friend. By "chokes" I mean the application frequently locked up, cells would stop responding and I had to constantly reload the page, in a spreadsheet with only a couple of hundred rows, and maybe 12 columns.
Re: Google Spreadsheets and Python
#9I think there's a bit of a gap in the software ecosystem today in that there's no tool that lets semi-technical people like myself create simple applications, e.g. to read and write to databases. Bit like MS Access used to do. Google Spreadsheets actually goes a long way (I've done some stuff using the IF function etc. in it), but obviously has its limits. So combining it with Python sounds interesting. Not sure if i…
Have you seen AirTable? It's definitely the best modern alternative to Access I've seen - easy to create tables, great web UI and a phenomenal iOS mobile app. https://www.airtable.com
It is the fastest growing productivity app of the year (I read somewhere based on a metric I cannot recall).
I didn't realize they had an API. I just looked it up and the documentation is so good it makes me tear up.
The trick with the documentation is that it lets you pick one of your own databases and it then makes all the examples relevant to that database!
Why doesn't everyone do that?
Re: Google Spreadsheets and Python
#10Interesting to choose this over simpler storage, such as sqlite. I suppose you get offsite backups for free.