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Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

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Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#21

Post by bliteben »

narush wrote: post #6

Warning: I'm a founder working in the spreadsheet space, so take the rest of my this comment with a (large) grain of salt. I've written before [1] (HN and elsewhere) about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. As this article mentions, there are many ways we can push this forward. I personally think the most powerful low-code spreadsheet tools we ca…

Shouldn't your product be independent of Jupyter? Jupyter is amazing but still seems to have a beta feel to me as often old Jupyter notebooks will not work at all (for lots of reasons).

I love python, hate the limits on google sheets apis, and don't really honestly think VBA is "scummy-crummy" it is just unsupported. Microsoft made a huge mistake discontinuing real Visual Basic, as it honestly could have been where Python is now, instead VB.net is basically dead, and the momentum Microsoft had with wysiwyg code editing is way behind where it was.

Very cool that you are generating code for the Jupyter notebook. What are the practical row limits as I see that as one reason someone might use Pandas instead of Excel?

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#22

Post by bliteben »

datalopers wrote: post #16

Excel users tend to do a far better job of data storage, analysis, and forecasting than most of overpaid SaaS-reliant "modern data team" (Data Engineers, Data Analysts, Analytics Engineers, Data Scientists).

It definitely is a scary business proposition for them to improve Excel and awaken the 800lb gorilla. Microsoft is certainly capable of improving Excel in ways that might even improve the productivity of the entire world. Seems like some of these startups are likely just giving training to future Microsoft employees.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#23

Post by bdcravens »

We are a small B2B, and during the pandemic our primary source of income disappeared. Our president built out a new service, one that is VERY analytics heavy. He built it in weeks using Excel, rather than the months it would have taken using "proper development". It's a beautiful monstrosity, and eventually needs to be ported to our codebase, but it saved the company.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#24

Post by croes »

datalopers wrote: post #16

Excel users tend to do a far better job of data storage, analysis, and forecasting than most of overpaid SaaS-reliant "modern data team" (Data Engineers, Data Analysts, Analytics Engineers, Data Scientists).

I doubt that. Data hoarding, yes. Creating unsupportable spreadsheet solutions, yes.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#25

Post by narush »

bliteben wrote: post #21
narush wrote: post #6

Warning: I'm a founder working in the spreadsheet space, so take the rest of my this comment with a (large) grain of salt. I've written before [1] (HN and elsewhere) about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. As this article mentions, there are many ways we can push this forward. I personally think the most powerful low-code spreadsheet tools we ca…

Shouldn't your product be independent of Jupyter? Jupyter is amazing but still seems to have a beta feel to me as often old Jupyter notebooks will not work at all (for lots of reasons). I love python, hate the limits on google sheets apis, and don't really honestly think VBA is "scummy-crummy" it is just unsupported. Microsoft made a huge mistake discontinuing real Visual Basic, as it honestly could have been where P…

The main benefit (to our users) of being in Jupyter is that we don’t have to force them to switch up their whole workflow. If they want to layer on a spreadsheet, bring an extension mak it easy to do this. We don’t want to lock people into our platform vs just provide the best spreadsheet experience we can!

For us, it’s nice because we don’t have to reinvent the wheel(s) that Jupyter comes with :-)

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#26

Post by narush »

segmondy wrote: post #10
narush wrote: post #6

Warning: I'm a founder working in the spreadsheet space, so take the rest of my this comment with a (large) grain of salt. I've written before [1] (HN and elsewhere) about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. As this article mentions, there are many ways we can push this forward. I personally think the most powerful low-code spreadsheet tools we ca…

Just curious, why as a Linux user shouldn't I use Libreoffice calc with python? Why bring in something so proprietary?

Mito isn’t just a spreadsheet that works with Python, but a spreadsheet that allows you to generate Python code when you edit!

If your just looking to work with spreadsheets with Python, I’d also reccomend checking out XLWings - I haven’t used it myself but some of our users do and love it!

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#27

Post by narush »

haolez wrote: post #14
narush wrote: post #6

Warning: I'm a founder working in the spreadsheet space, so take the rest of my this comment with a (large) grain of salt. I've written before [1] (HN and elsewhere) about how I think spreadsheets are the most popular programming paradigm ever, we just don't talk about it much. As this article mentions, there are many ways we can push this forward. I personally think the most powerful low-code spreadsheet tools we ca…

You need the commercial license to disable telemetry? That's... new.

Yeah that’s fair feedback. Our Pro features are a WIP currently, so this might evolve in the future. It was important to us that there is a way to be totally telemetry-less if users prioritize that - vs most other cloud based sass data science tools where you pretty much have no hope of total privacy.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#28

Post by satyrnein »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #11

>Suddenly, the field has begun to bloom. A small cluster of startups have in the past year released spreadsheet products All of which are subscription based SAAS. Maybe I am showing my VisiCalc oldster roots, but I want my document related tools to be pay once / run locally. I long for a computing world where the free tier is run-in-a-browser-on-someone-else's-computer and the paid tier is run local and native.

Subscription based SaaS doesn't bother me in and of itself. Cloud based supporting multiple collaborators and multiple devices, tech support often built in, no managing upgrades or patches, etc.

The problem is portability and lock-in. Which itself might be due to lack of standardization.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#30

Post by kgodey »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #11

>Suddenly, the field has begun to bloom. A small cluster of startups have in the past year released spreadsheet products All of which are subscription based SAAS. Maybe I am showing my VisiCalc oldster roots, but I want my document related tools to be pay once / run locally. I long for a computing world where the free tier is run-in-a-browser-on-someone-else's-computer and the paid tier is run local and native.

We're building a similar tool that's self-hosted only (https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar).

I'm glad there are more tools to make working with data easier, but I don't use any of them because putting my data into a proprietary service I have to keep paying for is a dealbreaker.

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