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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

#31

Post by motohagiography »

I've learned products designed to replace spreadsheets have a huge hurdle because the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job. Replacing them removes their autonomy and control over an information process, and subsumes the value they bring to their employers - so they will resist products that threaten that. Excel is a complete management subculture.

The other advice I give is if you are generating analytics, have a PowerBI connector of some kind because the people who make decisions (managers, etc) make them based on PowerBI, and not from an interface their staff is a peer at using, and likely has control over. In enterprise, they want data in metrics their staff can't see, hence a separate tool.

Spreadsheets will always be with us I think. The opportunity may be in creating one that is has sufficient work-alike features with legacy ones, with new power features (python, etc) where there is a connector between the high power open development environment, and the familiar Excel ones managers use. Key thing being not asking managers or sr. employees to change.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#32

Post by nerdponx »

motohagiography wrote: post #31

I've learned products designed to replace spreadsheets have a huge hurdle because the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job. Replacing them removes their autonomy and control over an information process, and subsumes the value they bring to their employers - so they will resist products that threaten that. Excel is a complete management subculture. The other advice I give is if you are ge…

It's not about autonomy in an abstract sense. It's the fact that regular people can customize, hack, modify, automate, and otherwise program the spreadsheet. Data analysts and managers are more than trained monkeys; they actually need to do those kinds of things (at least sometimes) in order to do their jobs.

I agree that the ideal world is one where you can connect the spreadsheets to other data sources, so you get the best of both.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#33

Post by BlueTemplar »

satyrnein wrote: post #28
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.

Also that it's pretty hard to make good spreadsheet software I guess ? (Even Excel has bugs sometimes, not to mention various quirks for backward compatibility...)

AFAIK FramaSoft decided to stop working on FramaCalc (based on / hosting EtherCalc, based on SocialCalc), because it was just too hard for a small association like that (which already has to deal with managing lots of other services for free), but they seem to have decided to postpone the shutdown, I guess because of COVID ?

https://framacalc.org/abc/en/

(For instance it supports exporting ODS but not importing it.)

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#34

Post by pete_nic »

bliteben wrote: post #22
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.

Agree with this. When battling Microsoft product can matter less than things like contracts and licensing. I have to believe that businesses are spending so much on Azure that they get Office for free (as an analogy - at a previous employer GSuite was nearly free because our AdSense bill was so high). Businesses are unlikely to pay extra for a few more features when they already have Excel and have no plans to move off Azure.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#35

Post by CPLX »

wildrhythms wrote: post #2

Every day I think about how Microsoft Access allowed otherwise not-so-tech-savvy users to, with just a little training and practice, build a complete relational database for their entire business, supported by a relatively sane GUI and a way to build forms and reports with very little (if any) 'code'. I have no idea what small companies are using nowadays, but I think there has to be some untapped middle ground somew…

I did wonders with FileMaker Pro for years and my understanding is that it’s still around as well.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#37

Post by throwaway787544 »

I just learned how to use spreadsheets recently, and I love them. As a programmer, spreadsheets are exactly the kind of tech I want to use every day. User-friendly point and click, IDE features, complex functions mapping data across rows/columns/tables. All I want now is to hook it up to Postgres, and then maybe a new app to automatically design simple web pages that pull out and display data with the same functions. This would save me months of time per year versus manually coding the same things.

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#38

Post by TAForObvReasons »

motohagiography wrote: post #31

I've learned products designed to replace spreadsheets have a huge hurdle because the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job. Replacing them removes their autonomy and control over an information process, and subsumes the value they bring to their employers - so they will resist products that threaten that. Excel is a complete management subculture. The other advice I give is if you are ge…

Excel can be replaced, but it won't be replaced by the current crop of VC-funded SaaS.

> Airtable really ought to be killing Excel, but the SaaS model combined with a stupidly low artificial row count limit (over 50000 rows is listed as "contact us for pricing") means that it will never achieve penetration into weird and wonderful use cases like Excel has.

Many Excel processes are 20+ years old. No SaaS could replace the stability and pricing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30871148

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#39

Post by throwanem »

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…

Wait, so, you're trying to make programming languages accessible to spreadsheet users, by giving a new spreadsheet to programmers?

Re: Spreadsheets Are Hot–and Cranking Out Complex Code

#40

Post by _the_inflator »

motohagiography wrote: post #31

I've learned products designed to replace spreadsheets have a huge hurdle because the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job. Replacing them removes their autonomy and control over an information process, and subsumes the value they bring to their employers - so they will resist products that threaten that. Excel is a complete management subculture. The other advice I give is if you are ge…

> the people who use spreadsheets treat operating the sheet as their job

Yes, observed the same. And "The new tool is faster and more reliable!" does not help either. They got their workflow and cope with it - for years.

Only time people adopted new tools - banking - when they could deliver their assignments way faster to their superiors. Personal advantages must be spotted.

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