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Comment by andix | Hacker News Reader

I like the part where you can do calculations like in classic spread sheet apps, but visualize what your are doing, instead of hiding it behind formula fields. (see this screenshot: http://strlen.com/treesheets/docs/images/screenshots/screens...)

But functionality and especially usability of this application is quite limited. It feels more like a proof of concept, than an application for daily use.

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My understanding is it's written pretty much only for his own needs, so I'd imagine usability is fine for him.

He's on here (username strlen) but doesn't comment much - maybe he'll chicken me in.

(author of treesheets here) not sure who username strlen is, but it's not me :)

But yes, TreeSheets was initially designed just to be perfect for my needs. It has existed since 2008 though, so it has plenty of general usability tweaks for others since.

The computational sub-language is indeed very weak. It can at least do `sum` though, which is 99% of my uses of spreadsheets :)

Huh, I was sure it was you for some reason. Sorry for the confusion.

I was a customer of Amiga E back in the day, and keep occasionally checking your site, maybe that's how I got it into my head. [And Aardappel the language has fascinated me ever since I saw it on your site]

Thanks! I presume you've seen Lobster? http://strlen.com/lobster/

Yes, it's very interesting.

Argh. This will teach me not to write comments on my phone. "Chicken me in" is of course meant to be "chime in".

I prefer "chicken me in" and it should be a thing.

So chicken me in on something, what is it, exactly, that you'd say you do around here?...

I'm going to chicken me in here to tell you to go duck yourself.

Well, chicken me out!!

Seconded. Not sure why it works so well, but it does.

It feels like something from British or Australian English. Chicken me in and put another shrimp on the barbie.

I always thought, this tool is best if used regularly, optimally daily. So you mentally stay inside the required workflow thinking and keep the shortcut memory fresh. Also to mention, it has a very good startup tutorial, which is good for first-time users, but also useful if you need a refresher on a certain topic.

But I never thought that "easy to get into" was a priority during development. Which is totally ok for me,

It's an app that has been worked on on/off for 13 years, so certainly not intended be "proof of concept".. but yeah, it's a 1 person OSS side project, not a commercial app with UX designers on staff.

If you have specific ideas about what is so limiting, please file a github issue.

I liked the way how you can do calculations. But there are not a lot of functions available. Excel has hundreds of functions. I wasn’t even able to calculate an average (sum I could do). Or something like pivot tables.

I totally understand it’s just a one man project, but I would really like to see some of those amazing concepts in a commercial application at the scale of Excel. That’s why I called it a proof of concept.

> It feels more like a proof of concept, than an application for daily use.

Speaking personally, I used TreeSheets daily for years (thanks 'Aardappel!) to write and manage my lecture notes, to-do items, daily routine, calendar, shipment tracking, and other life things. I found it a very capable tool with a constrained but thoughtful feature set and particularly excellent keyboard-driven navigation. I only moved away (to org-mode/Orgzly) for mobile support.

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