Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spreadsheets are all you need

spreadsheets-are-all-you-need.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 178 posts

Re: Spreadsheets are all you need

#131

Post by DuncanMak »

DonHopkins wrote: post #88
kitd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A spreadsheet is really just an easily accessible, visual, functional programming environment. I think the question is not how to make spreadsheets more programmable, but how to make programming IDEs as simple as spreadsheets.

From the discussion of Brad Myers' classic 1990 paper (originally published by the ACM CHI conference in 1986, then updated in 1990 in the Journal of Visual Languages & Computing), "Taxonomies of Visual Programming and Program Visualization" (where Brad dropped by to answer questions): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26057530 https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/papers/VLtax2-jvlc-1990.pdf https://news.ycombinator.com/it…

There's also this paper by Alan Kay that talks about the power of spreadsheets:

https://worrydream.com/refs/Kay_1984_-_Computer_Software.pdf

> The dynamic spreadsheet is a good example of such a tissuelike superobject. It is a simulation kit, and it provides a remarkable degree of direct leverage. Spreadsheets at their best combine the genres established in the 1970's (objects, windows, what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing and goal-seeking retrieval) into a "better old thing" that is likely to be one of the "almost new things" for the mainstream designs of the next few years.

Re: Spreadsheets are all you need

#132

Post by KMnO4 »

ianand wrote: post #16
rokhayakebe wrote: post #4

Maybe purchase sayn.ai. Saayn.ai is unvailable.

I'm a bonehead. I did buy saayn.ai but forgot to redirect it. Fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out.

I'm impressed by your investment into this. That's already a couple hundreds dollars (per year) on just the domains.

Re: Spreadsheets are all you need

#133

Post by rqtwteye »

wycy wrote: post #71
ramses0 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out "Google AppSheets". I've only scratched the surface while investigating other stuff but it's basically "drag-and-drop mobile GUI builder w/ sheets as a backend". If it were 2005 it would SLAY so much code. As it is, it seems really useful but the outcome seems a bit generic for modern tastes.

This seems quite hidden. Googling "google appsheets" results in "did you mean 'google sheets'?" and showing only results for google sheets unless you specifically then request AppSheets. It sounds cool, but I'd hate to rely on it since Google will probably shut it down.

I am not using them so it should be ok for now. Once I start using them it’s almost guaranteed that they will shut down that service.

Re: Spreadsheets are all you need

#134

Post by rqtwteye »

yreg wrote: post #104
mckn1ght wrote: post #2

Brilliant idea/URL. It’s often true though. So many things I think “I could make an app for that” I wind up just using a spreadsheet for. At least it helps me explore the use cases more deeply for when I’d want to actually take it to the next level. I hung out with a friend while they solved Advent of Code challenges in Excel, that was a trip to watch.

Our company used to run completely on Google spreadsheets (a lot of it was written by the CEO). It worked, but at some point, it became a convoluted unmaintainable mess. First, we partially switched to Airtable, but soon abandoned it in favour of our own internal node/python tools. The company is now a lot larger and the tools are more robust/capable/clean now, but at the same time, they are much less flexible than t…

“ they are much less flexible than the old spreadsheets.”

I have seen that several times while I was a consultant. People run their stuff on spreadsheets. It’s a big mess but things get done . IT comes in and starts producing “professional” systems. Months of requirements gathering, then they deliver something. It’s not 100% right so people need to write tickets. IT may or may not make the changes. If they make a change it takes forever. People still need to do their job so they go back to spreadsheets.

Re: Spreadsheets are all you need

#135

Post by anonymouse008 »

tombert wrote: post #103
anonymouse008 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discernment is an earned virtue. Knowing when to build and when to borrow is akin to a great filter in builder culture, congrats on making it through

I do think that there's sometimes value in reinventing the wheel. Sometimes your goal is to figure out how a wheel works, or you think you have a better design for a wheel, etc. In this case, I don't think anything I'd do is going to be revolutionary, and I don't think I would have learned at that much, so Google Sheets was great.

Aye - your discernment is strong ;)

Re: Spreadsheets are all you need

#136

Post by VibrantClarity »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #116
seb1204 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a video from Joel Spolsky - you suck at excel. That is a good starting point

Damn. Taken down! Can I get an archived copy somewhere? Link from Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/excel/comments/14zj5vz/you_suck_at_...

https://archive.org/details/youtube-0nbkaYsR94c

Re: Spreadsheets are all you need

#140

Post by dmux »

throw0101d wrote: post #69

Related to strange things running in spreadsheets, if you want to see how a 16-bit CPU works, Inkbox has created one in a spreadsheet: * https://github.com/InkboxSoftware/excelCPU * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rg7xvTJ8SU A twenty-four instruction assembly language is also provided.

It's since changed, but for a while the band [Portugal. The Man]'s website was just a Google Sheet!

https://web.archive.org/web/20230831003431/https://www.portu...

Post reply on HN