Ask HN: What two applications do you most wish were integrated? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What two applications do you most wish were integrated?

27 pointsksj211426 comments

This HN post on unbundling Zapier has gotten me thinking about software integrations and whether Zapier is "good enough": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23126455

Curious to know what two applications you most want integrated, and why the Zapier integration is not good enough?

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Evernote + a Markdown Editor + Weblog Post Publisher

There's Marxico that does the first two, but it's paid. On top of Evernote, you'd have to pay $16 a year just to be able to write in markdown.

It'd be nice to be able to jot down your thoughts in the editor, sync it with an Evernote notebook - specifically selected for weblog posts - and see your post appear on your blog.

In my industry (construction wholesale), there's a whole lot of systems that:

- don't have APIs

- have partial APIs (e.g. ask the company if they have an API and they send a PDF of a rough incomplete API they use internally and tell you that it can be used with basic auth and can change at anytime with no warning)

- undocumented APIs

Zapier probably doesn't even have these systems on it's radar but APIs and connectivity are sorely needed.

Applications, or services? Zapier is just for services, right?

The whole question sounds wrong to me. It’s like asking “Which two programs do you want to be able to pipe between?” All of them!

If you’re defining “integration” in a way that one program only works with one other program, that’s part of the problem.

I guess I meant services. I meant things like "I wish updates in X system were automatically reflected in Y system"

Guix + Git + Dat + Syncthing

Spreadsheets & Databases

If you're fine with hosted applications (SaaS) then both Notion and AirTable kind of mix spreadsheets and databases together. Notion does it while being mainly a wiki while AirTable does it while mainly being a spreadsheet.

I’m not, but thanks.

Have you used the data model features in newer versions of Excel? I haven't really used them myself (I generally keep all my code in SQL and just use Excel as a frontend) but my impression is that Microsoft is trying to do exactly that. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-a-Data-Model...

I’ve never really get very at home with Excel. I’ve used Lotus Improv, Quantrix Modeler, Apple Numbers and XCubes.

Then again I’ve got to the point where I build my balance sheets and profit & loss accounts as Python objects...

Me too! I started working on a proof of concept for this but lost steam https://github.com/timwis/dataface

Looks interesting!

I had something like a SQLite backend with a full spreadsheet front with all the usual functions plus SQL queries etc. all in a local application. Kind of like MS Access if it had Excel bolted onto its front.

I really like Apple’s Numbers and I’ve always thought that adding a database backend and support for Pivot tables and iterative solutions would make it into a real powerhouse.

Isn't this airtable?

There are a few SaaS products I've seen that do this, like https://basedash.io/

Isn't this similar to phpmyadmin with a much polished interface? what am I missing?

https://podio.com/ seems to nail this. I used it around 6-7 years ago and it was awesome! Seems like they were bought by citrix :O

Tableau does this

notion.so

I’m working on a desktop app in this space right now. Bridging the gap between Excel and SQL, or between the business analyst and the developer. Alpha version should be ready at the weekend.

It seems like every company I’ve worked at is populated by business analysts who pull Excel spreadsheets together, often in half baked or inconsistent formats, and then pass it onto the dev team with something along the lines of "Can you update the database with this. We’ve spent days putting it together."

My app lets you generate custom SQL per row in an Excel file where certain conditions are met, auto populating the SQL based on specified columns in the Excel data.

Slack and Trello.

I'd love to be able to have a '#trello' channel where I can see my full board without having to leave the Slack interface.

This would be nice!

Teams has the built in planner which is kinda like Trello, oh and Trello has an app for Teams so it can can be integrated.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/task-...

https://help.trello.com/article/1086-the-trello-app-for-micr...

SQLite virtual tables with remote data services.

NNTP with other discussion forums.

Visual Studio Code + GitExtensions

NLS & Sketchpad

Trello + Todoist

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