The world needs a better spreadsheet • Hacker News Board

Re: The world needs a better spreadsheet

#61

Post by 7952 » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:09 AM UTC

Chyzwar wrote: post #9

beachy wrote: post #3

Eons ago, I worked for Lotus Software (way before they belonged to IBM) on an exiting new product - their flagship Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet product, in those days the preeminent spreadsheet offering in the world, ported to the IBM mainframe. I travelled around Europe as we sold this to large corporations who wanted the power of the spreadsheet, but multipled by a gazillion times and made multi-user. Almost every custo…

I thing that good spreadsheet application with seamless integration with web and with collaboration tooling would be interesting. Decent scripting with something Julia and some kind of build in Jupyter notebook would be exciting to use. Integrated version control where each document lives in own repo that you can shared as just link shpreadsheet:://user.myNewspreadsheet Excel is relict of old ages: slow, bug ridden,…

Collaboration is great, but it should start with files. I want to be able to save things to a directory and send them via email. And have a stand alone format that can be archived. File based work flows are used for good reasons.

Re: The world needs a better spreadsheet

#62

Post by loqwe » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:12 AM UTC

canadian_voter wrote: post #8

Perhaps, In the end, the best piece of software is the one you never had to build in the first place. -- The Article Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble? -- SICP I think the real uncanny valley here lies in maintaining software, not designing it. Business needs change over time and software must adapt. I th…

> Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble? -- SICP

That was written what, 40 years ago? Fast forward today now computer hardware is meant to be discarded! protocols change, batteries and disks are sealed inside cases, driver software is abandoned to cloud-disabled... a piece of hardware 3 years old is ancient, unsupported, trash.

Re: The world needs a better spreadsheet

#63

Post by loqwe » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:14 AM UTC

dendory wrote: post #60

Being part of design meetings, it's amazing how many endless customizations and workflow adjustments people like project managers and consultants like to request for a new piece of software. But when it comes down to it, most users don't want a complex, hard to understand interface that has so many features it's supposed to improve everyone's productivity. Most people want to use their spreadsheet, their Outlook cale…

> most users don't wan ... so many features

mmm. which features do you want?

and you over there, which features to do you want.

and you, in the corner?

It adds up, doesn't it!

Re: The world needs a better spreadsheet

#64

Post by loqwe » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:16 AM UTC

jeeyoungk wrote: post #45

ianamartin wrote: post #39

I swear to god, anytime anything pops up on a website when I click on it, it seriously pisses me off. A fucking chatbox? I already hate your company. A fucking chatbox from the author of a blog? I hate you and everything you stand for. You are what's wrong with the internet. You should know better, and you do. But you do this anyway. Just stop.

I stopped reading when the chatbox obscured the screen also. I'm confused on what the author is trying to achieve.

apparently the spreadsheet the world needs is really a chat app.

Re: The world needs a better spreadsheet

#65

Post by bryanh » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:20 AM UTC

chowes wrote: post #23

mmonihan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP. This is an idea I've been going back and forth on for a while. I have checked out Quickbase, Airtable, Ragic, etc. What I've noticed is that I always want the ability to go to code when I need to. My clients are all on Rails apps today, and I'm happy with rails as a dev solution. And, I don't want to give up that flexibility. However, there are use cases where I want to just use a form builder UI to manage a data…

Ah alright - so definitely more aimed at people who can code. Ours was more focused at end-users. That is one area where Salesforce shines. APEX and Visualforce can get you just about anything you may need for customizations. I'm sure something similar will pop up, but then people will complain about having to sell your soul to them, too :) Workato is another nice tool to augment Quickbase & Airtable. It's like Zapie…

Zapier has custom Code steps (Javascript & Python):

https://zapier.com/help/code/

https://zapier.com/help/code-python/

Re: The world needs a better spreadsheet

#66

Post by conservajerk » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:21 AM UTC

Fundamentally software development is about writing and managing complex systems. Excel and the like have limited capability to manage complexity and any simple system built with excel eventually turns to bad smelling unmaintainable chaos. So then people build tools that manage complexity better but are still "easy to use". And then those tools become so complex that software developers are the only people who understand how to use them. And then what's the difference between said tool and writing real code? After 10-20 years we are back to where we started. I wonder exactly how many times I will see this in my career?

Re: The world needs a better spreadsheet

#67

Post by bottled_poe » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:26 AM UTC

dendory wrote: post #60

Being part of design meetings, it's amazing how many endless customizations and workflow adjustments people like project managers and consultants like to request for a new piece of software. But when it comes down to it, most users don't want a complex, hard to understand interface that has so many features it's supposed to improve everyone's productivity. Most people want to use their spreadsheet, their Outlook cale…

Of course users don't want anything complex, and if the resulting custom software makes a task more confusing and error-prone than a spreadsheet, the developers and designers have failed.

Instead, I read this comment as meaning a few different things:

1. It is difficult to get users to try something different.

2. Most users don't comprehend the limitations of the software with which they are already familiar.

Re: The world needs a better spreadsheet

#68

Post by robohamburger » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:27 AM UTC

Once you get all the security, backups, data validation and whatever exporting/search capability the people need a system like this is never simple. I wonder how happy they really were with his software vs relieved to have a semi-functioning system.

It still seems like something like this is in the realm of possible. Salesforce mostly does this, but its UI is garbage and most people end up hiring implementors for it.

Re: The world needs a better spreadsheet

#69

Post by tyingq » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:28 AM UTC

Quickbase does an amazing job with allowing non-tech users to create their own crud apps, and the model is very spreadsheet like, including grid edit if you want.

The trouble is the pricing model. $25/user per month for the edition that's not hobbled. For some use cases, that makes sense. For others, it's just way too high.

Re: The world needs a better spreadsheet

#70

Post by meredydd » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:32 AM UTC

chowes wrote: post #11

I agree with this in premise, and had a very similar idea with a friend earlier this year - that many of the business apps out there are really just CRUD apps. The main piece of feedback that we got when pitching this idea was that you're going to end up as a master-of-none. Yes, we could give you the tools to set up Customer, Ticket, etc. objects. But in order to win over Zendesk, you're going to need all of the fea…

The long tail, though, is huge here. Anything that actually expresses your business workflow is going to be more specialised, and people end up really chafing under one-size-fits-all solutions (as evidenced by the bottomless demand for custom line of business development).

Our big point with Anvil (https://anvil.works) is something already noted here: The key is being able to write real code.

Pure Crud - anything sufficiently simple to do with a spreadsheet - is going to be done by a slick single-purpose startup. But anything that requires custom logic, you won't get quite what you want and you'll be stuck in spreadsheet-land or spending thousands on a contractor. Offering people a choice between those extremes can relieve a lot of pain.