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Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

news.ycombinator.com

141–150 of 221 posts

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#141
This is really cool. There was another recent post about something similar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34805132

One question/thought: what's your security like? Inevitably, people treat spreadsheets like databases for better or worse. That means they often contain lots of things that might be better stored elsewhere - sometimes PII, sometimes a proprietary formula, set of factors as inputs to a process, etc.

So, I think many spreadsheet-heavy businesses will avoid something that doesn't obviously sit inside the fortress of security they've approved. Of course, someone can just accidentally email a spreadsheet to the wrong person or store it somewhere with no security. It happens all the time, I'm under no illusion.

Point is: I would be more likely to give it a shot given a base level of confidence about the security of storing anything in these sheets.

Interested to hear your take!

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#142

The concept of Python-based spreadsheets was explored by Resolver One[1], a defunct proprietary desktop app that was discontinued ~10 years ago[2]. It seems a web version of the app has been published in open-source[3] but that too has been EOL. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120211201410/http://www.resolv... [2] https://www.resolversystems.com [3] https://github.com/pythonanywhere/dirigible-spreadsheet

[deleted]

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#144

LibreOffice Calc combined with python's pandas and numpy modules meet all needs I have for spreadsheets, with matplotlib and seaborn for visualization. The Ipython shell is the optimal IDE for this approach IMO. My desktop reference is: "Python for Data Analysis 2nd ed" (Wes McKinney, 2018)

(Neptyne cofounder here)

All great tools to be sure! I am a huge fan of numpy and pandas especially. For plotting in Neptyne I usually opt for plotly over matplotlib/seaborn. Agreed too on the shell -- that's why we built one into our product.

I am curious though, do you typically share/collaborate on these spreadsheets with others? Do you have a neat way of packaging up the spreadsheet+Python code?

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#145

Hey, this is awesome! As someone who primarily codes in Python, I love that it's first class with a REPL! Nothing frustrates me more then when I have to figure out Javascript for scripting in Google Sheets. I ran through your demo and I have some feedback: - Tab completion in the REPL would be great. - When I change code in the editor, it doesn't update the cell where that code is used until I click on the cell, clic…

Thanks, this is excellent feedback: * The REPL is supposed to do autocomplete where it makes sense. If you enter A1. it should show you a list of things you can do there. That always feels better than asking for it explicitly. Let me know if that doesn't work. * Yeah, code changes don't rerun the affected cells. It is something we've debated, and maybe we should? It feels like it could also cause unexpected things to…

Excel has an option for formula calculation, automatic vs manual. The default is automatic. There is also a 'calculate now' button to use for if you have manual calculations set. I would expect that if automatic calculations set, then my code changes would trigger calculations on affected cells. I can't speak for Sheets, but most Excel users would probably expect that behavior.

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#146

Very Excited. I'm likely very close to the ideal user. I don't program for work but make CSV-consuming tools from Python here and there to work on giant exports of data when they get outside of Excel's built-in magic. Most recently the exact task was to consume a Zoom user export, filter with RegEx, and transform the table for upload to Zoom as a CSV again, but with different fields. This would translate very well to…

(Neptyne cofounder here)

That does sound like a fitting use case. Technically speaking it should be OK with 70k rows, but we've got some optimizations that might need to go out before it performs well. Ideally, you should be limited only by the memory allocated to the Python kernel, but today there are some other limitations that get in the way.

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#147
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, Neptyne doesn't support XLWings and that link doesn't resolve. Where did this come from?

I think GPT-3-bots are trolling HN now...

Right? It looks exactly like what GPT3 would say!

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, this is excellent feedback: * The REPL is supposed to do autocomplete where it makes sense. If you enter A1. it should show you a list of things you can do there. That always feels better than asking for it explicitly. Let me know if that doesn't work. * Yeah, code changes don't rerun the affected cells. It is something we've debated, and maybe we should? It feels like it could also cause unexpected things to…

Excel has an option for formula calculation, automatic vs manual. The default is automatic. There is also a 'calculate now' button to use for if you have manual calculations set. I would expect that if automatic calculations set, then my code changes would trigger calculations on affected cells. I can't speak for Sheets, but most Excel users would probably expect that behavior.

Maybe? The closest analog in Excel would be to define a VBA function call it from a sheet, go back to the VBA editor, change the definition and see the function be run automatically everywhere with the new code. That does not happen, I just tried

Re: Launch HN: Neptyne (YC W23) – A programmable spreadsheet that runs Python

#149

Very cool! I constantly struggle trying to do things in spreadsheets that are easy in Python. But I/O makes it annoying to write one-off scripts for a 30 second op. This would solve that pain point! I would love a Google Sheets integration, since that's where I already live with most of my CSV/Sheets data + it would seamlessly fit into my workflow. If this was a Chrome extension I would have installed it today. As is…

Switching tools is hard, that's something we understand. You can import sheets fairly easily of course into Neptyne. Would a two way sync (where a certain region of a Neptyne document and a certain region of a Google Sheet would automatically be kept in sync) make you have another look?
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