Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 131 posts

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#81

Post by FearNotDaniel »

dotancohen wrote: post #57
kazinator wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There is an ancient curses-based spreadsheet program called "sc" (spreadsheet calculator). It sounds like "scim" is to "sc" vaguely like "vim" is to "vi": new program with more features cloning/imitating ancient program. "vi" was written by Bill Joy in 1979. "sc" by James Gosling in 1981. sc-im claims to be based on "sc". It's a direct lineage unrelated to GUI spreadsheets.

Gosling wrote sc? I had no idea. I was an scim user before moving to visidata like another poster mentioned, so I kinda-sorta feel like an sc user. For those who don't know, James Gosling invented a popular VM-based "write once, test everywhere" programming language named after a tree. Then named after a coffee.

For those who don't know, and don't want to have to go off and search to understand the cryptic comment... He's talking about Java. Which in an earlier iteration was known as Oak.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#83

Post by broodbucket »

executesorder66 wrote: post #80

This is really cool, but I don't think this is very useful. In my opinion: if you can use vim, you can probably code, or at least figure it out without too much trouble. If you can code, then you don't need a spreadsheet. You can just write a program to crunch the numbers, or produce a report etc. Excel is so popular, because it is a way for non-coders to crunch a bunch of numbers in a relatively easy way. And the be…

I would nominally agree but plenty of people seem to use and appreciate this so who am I to judge.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#84

Post by steinuil »

khimaros wrote: post #50
ericpruitt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain what made you prefer visidata over SCIM?

fast loading of massive datasets and built-in support for SQLite tables. i also found the interaction to be more intuitive, which is important for a tool i pick up sporadically.

That's really neat, I've been looking exactly for a spreadsheet TUI to browse and edit SQLite dbs. Cheers!

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#85

Post by bregma »

fbn79 wrote: post #72
raingrove wrote: post #18

Pretty cool! It's kinda amusing that we've gone from TUI (VisiCalc/Lotus 1-2-3) to GUI (Excel), and back to TUI though.

The great drawback of TUI app is that are quite unusable from touch devices, or generally devices without a keyboard). If you find a way to make them usable on mobile I think they can get a great comeback

If you can find a way to make touch-friendly interfaces useful on desktop devices with a large screen and a keyboard maybe then they'll take off.

Better yet, make all user interfaces the same as a toaster. Everyone can use a toaster. Bread goes in, push the lever. One universal way of thinking for everyone and everything. No domination by the tyranny of choice.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#86

Post by meindnoch »

djha-skin wrote: post #62

Where have you been all my life. This fills such a hole in the market -- a Vim-like terminal spreadsheet tool. The terminal tools have gotten so much better in the last few years. There's a real Renaissance happening.

It's only because you can't put Electron apps in the terminal (yet).

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#87

Post by ikari_pl »

meindnoch wrote: post #86
djha-skin wrote: post #62

Where have you been all my life. This fills such a hole in the market -- a Vim-like terminal spreadsheet tool. The terminal tools have gotten so much better in the last few years. There's a real Renaissance happening.

It's only because you can't put Electron apps in the terminal (yet).

though with brow.sh ... :D

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#88

Post by asutekku »

executesorder66 wrote: post #80

This is really cool, but I don't think this is very useful. In my opinion: if you can use vim, you can probably code, or at least figure it out without too much trouble. If you can code, then you don't need a spreadsheet. You can just write a program to crunch the numbers, or produce a report etc. Excel is so popular, because it is a way for non-coders to crunch a bunch of numbers in a relatively easy way. And the be…

i am able to program but hell no i will start to crunch numbers programmatically unless it's something a basic spreadsheet can't do. i use spreadsheets exactly because i don't need to code and create something from scratch.

but while this is not for me (no interest in learning vim), i'm pretty sure many other people will find this useful

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#89

Post by otikik »

executesorder66 wrote: post #80

This is really cool, but I don't think this is very useful. In my opinion: if you can use vim, you can probably code, or at least figure it out without too much trouble. If you can code, then you don't need a spreadsheet. You can just write a program to crunch the numbers, or produce a report etc. Excel is so popular, because it is a way for non-coders to crunch a bunch of numbers in a relatively easy way. And the be…

I am a counter example to your assessment. I can definetly code, but I wip up spreadsheets often.

> If there is a use case for spreadsheets that is not better served by some real code, I'm interested to hear what it is.

Sharing information with non-coders could be an obvious one. I could have done a database with my wife's sewing patterns collection, of which she has ~300. Instead, I did a spreadsheet in google docs, which she's very familiar with. Told her how to enter data there (4 fields, name, file, tags and picture) and there's a couple tabs that allow her to filter things out, etc. Then she can do whatever she wants with it, like using conditional formatting to make dress patterns red. It was done in 2-3 hours, and she got exactly what she wanted.

I worked in a place where both the input and output was spreadsheets, and the users were spreadsheet users. We did implement a database for this particular one for the heavy algorithmic part, but a lot of the business logic (e.g. initial data validation, final presentation of the results) lived on the spreadsheets themselves.

Another interesting one is data-to-visual time. Unless you happen to be proficient in a particular area of programming (e.g. front programming with proficiency in something like D3, or R programmer) getting decent graphs out of data is a chore when going the programming route. With spreadsheets, you put the columns and get the graphs essentially for free.

To me spreadsheets are just another tool in the toolbox; they are appropriate for some tasks. They can definitely be misused and abused. Knowing which occasion is which is where experience comes in.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#90

Post by zik »

executesorder66 wrote: post #80

This is really cool, but I don't think this is very useful. In my opinion: if you can use vim, you can probably code, or at least figure it out without too much trouble. If you can code, then you don't need a spreadsheet. You can just write a program to crunch the numbers, or produce a report etc. Excel is so popular, because it is a way for non-coders to crunch a bunch of numbers in a relatively easy way. And the be…

VisiCalc - the first spreadsheet - was entirely text based and people found it useful enough that it exploded in popularity and was very successful on the Apple ][ until the advent of the IBM PC when Lotus 1-2-3 came and ate its lunch.

Lotus was also text based.

Post reply on HN