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I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

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Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#111

I've built quite a few dashboards while working on proof-of-concept feature/product engineering. Even though people often think I'm joking, almost always the backend database was a Google Sheet. Google Sheets has great API support, easy to write functionality, convenient read and file dumps, works well with Pandas/SQL, and has a universally appreciated UX. Data validation can be annoying if the "admin" directly enter…

Firebase auth? Would it be possible for a savvy end user to replicate your API calls to Google Sheets directly to bypass the auth?

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#112

I've built quite a few dashboards while working on proof-of-concept feature/product engineering. Even though people often think I'm joking, almost always the backend database was a Google Sheet. Google Sheets has great API support, easy to write functionality, convenient read and file dumps, works well with Pandas/SQL, and has a universally appreciated UX. Data validation can be annoying if the "admin" directly enter…

> for building a proof of concept, nothing beats Google Sheets

Supabase is free and checks all the boxes in addition to having auth, vector search, logs, security, and not being ... Google

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#113

During COVID, I built a quick no-code solution to help ‘all-inclusive resorts’ in Cancun and Punta Cana. It started with guests scanning a QR code, filling out a short form, and scheduling their Antigen/PCR tests. Over time, it evolved to help nurses manage operations, streamline test results, and send certificates via email. What began as a DIY project during lockdown scaled quickly to Mexico City, the Dominican Rep…

woah! didn't even know you can embed videos on HN!

I think your browser is doing some embedding cause I don't see an embedded video...

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#114

I've built quite a few dashboards while working on proof-of-concept feature/product engineering. Even though people often think I'm joking, almost always the backend database was a Google Sheet. Google Sheets has great API support, easy to write functionality, convenient read and file dumps, works well with Pandas/SQL, and has a universally appreciated UX. Data validation can be annoying if the "admin" directly enter…

Monzo (online bank in UK) let you see all your transactions in a Google sheet (with some caveats e.g. interest earned is skipped). I wanted to make a total wealth chart over all years. It's so damn complicated in Google sheets. In MS Excel I could simply make a pivot chart, apply any aggregation on days/weeks and be done with it. But with Sheets I had to make a new aggregate column, filter data in another new column,…

My bank just exports to CSV, which is trivially importable to Excel, Sheets, Pandas or whatever else you need.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#115
post #26

I use Notion databases for this. They're essentially spreadsheets with customizable table, list, kanban views, and each row gets its own wiki-style page in addition to the structured data. So it's nice for lists of books or movies or games, where you have some metadata but you also might want to take notes on it when you read/watch/play. It works pretty well for this purpose, but I also could probably make Obsidian o…

We're building Thymer [1] for this, which is end-to-end encrypted, offline-first and optionally self-hostable. It's like an editor but you can organize anything into custom database views, we hope to get it ready soon.

[1] https://thymer.com/

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you use this feature for?

Basically what parent said, little personal database tables. Example: I have a list of 100 movies I want to see, and I have columns like date watched, year released, should I rewatch again in 10 years, notes, etc. I want to be able to do two things: 1. Sort/filter by columns (ex: status = not watched) 2. Add markdown like "[[Steve]] told me to watch this" and have backlinks etc. work seamlessly with the rest of my no…

I think this all works out of the box with logseq.

You can create a movie template with a few props then put them anywhere and then tabularise all the entries with a query.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#117

I've built quite a few dashboards while working on proof-of-concept feature/product engineering. Even though people often think I'm joking, almost always the backend database was a Google Sheet. Google Sheets has great API support, easy to write functionality, convenient read and file dumps, works well with Pandas/SQL, and has a universally appreciated UX. Data validation can be annoying if the "admin" directly enter…

Monzo (online bank in UK) let you see all your transactions in a Google sheet (with some caveats e.g. interest earned is skipped). I wanted to make a total wealth chart over all years. It's so damn complicated in Google sheets. In MS Excel I could simply make a pivot chart, apply any aggregation on days/weeks and be done with it. But with Sheets I had to make a new aggregate column, filter data in another new column,…

You're fine with Google seeing complete information about your income and spending? I'm not one of those truly paranoid, but this seems like a bit too much.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#118
post #9

Why lock down to a nocode tool instead of just hacking together a simple html5 page? Ai assistants have speed up the prototype workflow for doing less code/design.

True that Claude can generate a simple working prototype in a single prompt. But there's still the friction of deploying the app, making it accessible across devices, and easily managing updates. Which something like Glide streamlines for non-technical users.

For those curious, you can also do some pretty fast prototyping (including deploy) with https://bolt.new and https://v0.dev (vercel). Sometimes even a single prompt.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monzo (online bank in UK) let you see all your transactions in a Google sheet (with some caveats e.g. interest earned is skipped). I wanted to make a total wealth chart over all years. It's so damn complicated in Google sheets. In MS Excel I could simply make a pivot chart, apply any aggregation on days/weeks and be done with it. But with Sheets I had to make a new aggregate column, filter data in another new column,…

You're fine with Google seeing complete information about your income and spending? I'm not one of those truly paranoid, but this seems like a bit too much.

That seems like the least "compromising" data, compared to other things we let them get.

Imagine there are whole countries out there where income is public and accessible to anyone ;)

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