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Are there good command-line interfaces for spreadsheets? I don't do anything super financially-important and I'd prefer to stay in the terminal for quick editing of things, especially if I can have Vi keybindings.
Emacs with org-mode and evil-mode seems to be up your alley.
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visicalc is not the benchmark you think it is. it's decades old. this day and age, dependency graphs for any real world use case will definitely need a dependency graph. it helps no one to suggest otherwise, and actually makes light of a specific engineering task that will for a fact be required of anyone looking to build a spreadsheet engine into a product
I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm saying that your "toy example" comment is very dismissive of something that was an extraordinary accomplishment of its day. They invented spreadsheets without it. Dependency graphs are excellent and widely useful things we should all be happy to adapt and reach for, far beyond spreadsheets. We should be grateful that they're available to all of us to build into software products so r…
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The idea of backward updating is fascinating but is not generally feasible or computable. What kind of problems can you solve backwardly?
> not generally feasible or computable You'd be surprised. It really depends on how you define the problem and what your goal is. My goal with bidicalc what to find ONE solution. This makes the problem somewhat possible since when there are an infinity of solution, the goal is just to converge to one. For example solving 100 = X + Y with both X and Y unknown sounds impossible in general, but finding one solution is n…
You might dig into an operations research textbook, there are a number of problems solved with linear programming techniques which might make sense for your interface... In fact might be more intuitive for people that way and with commercial potential.
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visicalc is not the benchmark you think it is. it's decades old. this day and age, dependency graphs for any real world use case will definitely need a dependency graph. it helps no one to suggest otherwise, and actually makes light of a specific engineering task that will for a fact be required of anyone looking to build a spreadsheet engine into a product
I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm saying that your "toy example" comment is very dismissive of something that was an extraordinary accomplishment of its day. They invented spreadsheets without it. Dependency graphs are excellent and widely useful things we should all be happy to adapt and reach for, far beyond spreadsheets. We should be grateful that they're available to all of us to build into software products so r…
I dismissed the article's claim that maintaining a dependency graph is overkill for a spreadsheet. That's a false statement. It might have been true at the time, but it's not true today. The phrase as written in TFA is poor form and misleading to beginners.
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Keeping a dependency tree is not complicated
It's more complicated than not keeping one, at least.
Are there good command-line interfaces for spreadsheets? I don't do anything super financially-important and I'd prefer to stay in the terminal for quick editing of things, especially if I can have Vi keybindings.
Oh man, a TUI spreadsheet application that can edit ODF or XLSX format would be absolutely killer. Would love to hear if anyone knows of such a tool
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I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm saying that your "toy example" comment is very dismissive of something that was an extraordinary accomplishment of its day. They invented spreadsheets without it. Dependency graphs are excellent and widely useful things we should all be happy to adapt and reach for, far beyond spreadsheets. We should be grateful that they're available to all of us to build into software products so r…
I didn't dismiss Visicalc at all. In fact, I even said it had fantastic success. I dismissed the article's claim that maintaining a dependency graph is overkill for a spreadsheet. That's a false statement. It might have been true at the time, but it's not true today. The phrase as written in TFA is poor form and misleading to beginners.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't dismiss Visicalc at all. In fact, I even said it had fantastic success. I dismissed the article's claim that maintaining a dependency graph is overkill for a spreadsheet. That's a false statement. It might have been true at the time, but it's not true today. The phrase as written in TFA is poor form and misleading to beginners.
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