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Comment by kdeldycke | Hacker News Reader

The concept of Python-based spreadsheets was explored by Resolver One[1], a defunct proprietary desktop app that was discontinued ~10 years ago[2].

It seems a web version of the app has been published in open-source[3] but that too has been EOL.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120211201410/http://www.resolv... [2] https://www.resolversystems.com [3] https://github.com/pythonanywhere/dirigible-spreadsheet

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I remember this from the book IronPython in Action. The book teaches IronPython (Python for .Net) by having you build a spreadsheet application. The author worked on Resolver One.

(cofounder of Neptyne here)

Thanks for mentioning this! I came across Resolve One recently in another HN thread. Were you a user yourself? What did you think of it?

I did try it, but that was ages ago. I remember going wow! and thinking this is the future of spreadsheet. Alas it didnt pan out that way. One thing it had if I recall waell, was defining a function without having to go full VBA style scripting. It was more like a lambda you define in a cell.

I have the install files for Resolver One cached somewhere. If there's interest I'll dig them out and post publicly.

I was very sorry to see the project go insolvent. I didn't become an active user due to accident of time not discovering it until the final months.

Resolve One was on my radar at the time because I was deep into building ERPs in Python.

All our clients had stacks of sedimented business rules and know-how, lying around in a mess of unreliable, unmaintained and un-versioned Excel files.

I was thinking of using Resolve One as a conduit that might be helpful to absorb all of that. A UI similar to a spreadsheet would be a clever trojan for adoption, as I could win the hearts and minds of the users that were not seeing themselves as developers. While bringing better software engineering and QA in the enterprisey world of organically grown, ad-hoc solutions.

Neptyne seems to revive that grand vision, so it would be interesting to study how and why Resolve One failed. Too soon perhaps, as the market wasn’t as big as it is today? Or maybe by the time you reach the critical point of the messy pile of Excel docs, you consent to invest into your core business and hire internal developers. I’d love to read a post-mortem of Resolve One.

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