Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet • Hacker News Board

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#31

Post by crrashby » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 4:52 PM UTC

pseut wrote: post #22

From the video, this looks like a graphical spreadsheet debugger. That is a fucking fantastic idea. It's been a while sine I used a lot of excel, but this would have been great. I think you'd want to target non-programmers who use a lot of excel (so people in "business") and just bring them more debugging features. An excel IDE would be an ambitious potential next step.

I'm not sure I agree with the second point. Excel has tons of debugging features, too many. It means most people don't know about all the tools and they're all really badly designed. This is about getting rid of all that and creating one new feature, the tree view. Which offers way more functionality on it's own.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#32

Post by shorbaji » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:01 PM UTC

jackgavigan wrote: post #20

shorbaji wrote: post #10

Interesting. As I understand it, you use a spreadsheet as input and then create the data flow diagram. I certainly see how seeing the data flow diagram means better clarity and error-finding. So here is a question for you? What if we take it a step further and have users actually entered their complex spreadsheets in a tidy graphical data flow diagram which mapped back?

Like Livesheets, you mean?

Yep. Livesheets more or less.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#33

Post by jczhang » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:09 PM UTC

crrashby wrote: post #24

hleszek wrote: post #14

Any idea of the price ?

We haven't really decided yet. What would businesses be willing to spend?

mmm they wouldn't unless many individuals push for it. This wouldn't be used by management, so people below would have to push for it. I would recommend some type of freemium model.

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#34

Post by nostromo » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:19 PM UTC

I love the way you've presented the underlying structure so much, I found myself wishing you would replace the spreadsheet itself!

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#35

Post by while1 » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:20 PM UTC

This looks awesome! I quite often stumble upon the task of automating or porting spreadsheets into code. This is always a pain as it might in some ways be hard to visualize the flow in a chart. This tool would greatly simplify the task. Looks really sweet!

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#36

Post by crrashby » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:26 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #34

I love the way you've presented the underlying structure so much, I found myself wishing you would replace the spreadsheet itself!

Well, maybe one day...

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#37

Post by filearts » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

I do financial modelling at a Big4 and can easily see the value of this type of visualization tool.

I wonder if/how you are able to visualize INDEX/MATCH type lookups, SUMPRODUCT and array formulas? Obviously, these types of formulas are not in every model, but for my usecase it would be pretty important.

Also, since others have asked but the answer watn't too clear: is any data uploaded?

You mention that you have plans to move to a model where things happen in reverse: models would be defined as flows and the spreadsheet could be generated. What progress (if any) have you made on that front?

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#38

Post by rjsamson » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:33 PM UTC

Very cool! I've got two bloated excel spreadsheets that need to be ported to a web app and this looks like it would be really helpful. Is this available yet to use or still in the early stages?

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#39

Post by symr » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:33 PM UTC

This looks great!

Re: Visualise the structure of a spreadsheet

#40

Post by cdcarter » Mon, Oct 21, 2013, 5:33 PM UTC

crrashby wrote: post #2

I've been working on this myself and would really love to get some feedback. Would this be useful for the problems you have with Excel?

How do you plan to support links between documents. The place I work at now has a very complex budgeting process where each department sends my office their budget spreadsheets and we link them all into an overview that also does things like calculating benefits payments and taxes. There's a lot that can go wrong in that process, and every time I go back and look at a submitted version I find some mistake someone missed.