Yea, reading his description of the Excel data problems his girlfriend had hit very close to home. A large swath of my current job responsibilities often involve automating these type of data aggregations so that non-technical users can do them. Often, this leads me to coding the entire task in VBA so that they can do it with the push of a button within the workbook they are using. At this point I have entire librari…
couldn‘t this tool be used to ‚compile‘ the SQL or C# processing into a button?
Yep, it certainly can. It supports embedding code into the workbook and running it on defined triggers such as user interactions.
I hope Microsoft gives you a ton of money and hires you to make Excel like this. VBA is so crap. And this looks amazing.
I hope so too. I've used QueryStorm for a year or so. I try to avoid Excel as much as possible, but when I have to use it, I can spend 4 hour learning the Excel/VBA way to do something, or 1 minute and write it in SQL. It doesn't make sense how this isn't in Excel already. Seriously. Try to do a join and some simple data manipulation/aggregation in Excel without this. Or try to emulate SQL minus/except. You'll Google…
I like your humour, I like the joke about the mansion, I like how you casually assume that choosing the project over Anna was obvious as you move on. Nice article! You should do an interview with IndieHackers!
I like the way you list things you like. Never heard of IndieHackers, but I'd love to be interview by them if they'll have me. I'll check em out. Cheers for the tip and the kind words.
My usual approach when I reach the limit of my excel skills (and patience) is to save as csv, write a Python script to do the job, import back in excel for the graphs. This looks like it could nicely streamline the process, granted I learn a bit of C# (any excuse to pick up a new language I guess). Looking forward to try the tool the next time I battle a budget forecasting file. And kudos for the well-written and fun…
I guess it's time to add Python support to QueryStorm.
My usual approach when I reach the limit of my excel skills (and patience) is to save as csv, write a Python script to do the job, import back in excel for the graphs. This looks like it could nicely streamline the process, granted I learn a bit of C# (any excuse to pick up a new language I guess). Looking forward to try the tool the next time I battle a budget forecasting file. And kudos for the well-written and fun…
Let me know if I can help with trying it out. I'm in the "do-things-that=don't-scale" mode, at least until I save up for my mansion, so please feel free to make use of it!
There were many components mentioned here that sound like they would be marvelously useful to the open-source community without being too competitive (eg; various SQLite parsing tooling, SQLite/Excel interface, SQLite/other db interface, etc). Might be worth open-sourcing? Perhaps even under a restrictive license (free for FOSS work, otherwise paid).
I would love to, I just don't have the time to isolate this stuff into their own projects and popularize it.
Kudos on the IDE, kudos on helping your girlfriend, but it could have done without the "I'll solve all the problems with technology and then she'll see me as the hero I am" schtick. It made it kind of an uncomfortable read, even though you did clearly build something with a use case, which is always admirable.
That was auto-ironic, though:) I think that's the right phrase...
I've spent the last month (yes - month) writing a custom CLI to run on CSV for a customer which have data scattered in a bunch of Excel files. This seem a bit too good to be true.
Only one way to find out:) If you need help setting it up, let me know, I'd be glad to help if I can
Thank you for sharing this with us. Have you considered turning this into a web based SaaS product? (upload excel -> do fancy stuff -> export or save the result on cloud) Is there any specific reason for the current licensing/revenue model?
No plans for the cloud solution so far. I figured it needs a community, so a lot of it has to be free for non commercial use. For commercial use I figured the price isn't going to be an issue. Probably there's more tweaking to do there. I'd love to get some thoughts on it.
Having built some very cool things that in the end nobody bought, I strongly disagree that one should just build the thing and then try to sell it. I also disagree that these two approaches lead to evolution vs revolution. Even if you have a revolutionary idea, and even if you can build it, it's still a waste of time if nobody will buy it. No matter how revolutionary your idea, you can try marketing it. If you are ev…
So I entirely believed this advice, completely and absolutely. And then I started my current project. I'm working on a thing now which no one believes is possible in the AI space (and to be honest I didn't either). So I built a tech demo which proved to myself that it really does work. Now I do the "I'm doing XXXX", get the cynical "yeah right" look, but the idea is interesting enough that people are prepared to see…
Sounds like you need to re-read what was written because your approach falls in the same line of thinking. Creating a demo is part of sales, even if you had to develop something in order to create that demo. You’re not asking people to integrate your finished product into their life, you’re asking them to view a 30 second demo. And then they’re reaching out to you and asking if you would take some of their money off their hands. Great!