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Comment by svara | Hacker News Reader

Honestly this is something you say as a person who doesn't really run into the use cases for spreadsheets.

I've been writing code since I was a kid, but there are jobs a spreadsheet is just the right tool for. Almost anything that involves creating an overview of lots of interdependent numbers really.

Excel in particular is a lot more powerful than you might be aware of if you're a casual user, and I would honestly recommend you learn it properly, as you would learn a programming language, since it's a really useful skill to have (1).

That said, I've often thought about what a programmer's spreadsheet tool would look like. Scientific grade plotting, N-dimensional spreadsheets, a real programming language in the cell formulas...

Someone must have attempted it?

(1) By the way, ChatGPT is great at teaching Excel.

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>That said, I've often thought about what a programmer's spreadsheet tool would look like. Scientific grade plotting, N-dimensional spreadsheets, a real programming language in the cell formulas...

Someone must have attempted it?

That sounds suspiciously similar to any SQL database if you ask me...

I like postgres myself, but people talk fondly of mySQL too.. as for viewing the "spreadsheet", there are probably hundreds of solutions. I'm partial to DBeaver myself, if it's the spreadsheet feeling you're looking for at least.

For the n-dimensional part there's xcubes:

https://www.xcubes.net/

It's not that they're not powerful, it's everything else. Spreadsheets are great for quickly putting down some data and evolving your understanding as you go. Make a pivot table, filter it, make some charts, show it to someone, throw it away. Where they come unstuck is on long running more or less static important calculations that everyone uses. This is because 1) no version control, so you have copies upon copies being passed around. 2) inscrutable formulas that should be documented udfs. 3) data with no constraints like types, nullability, foreign key, so the data has no integrity. 4) insufficient tests. 5) insufficient error messages. 6) insufficient logging. Etc, etc.

I sort of see where you're coming from, and it's probably correct that processes that rely on complex spreadsheets would often be better served by well engineered and designed software. But that is often not the realistic alternative .

The realistic alternative would be a mess of poorly engineered custom scripts, which offer no advantage over the spreadsheet.

With the spreadsheet, anyone can take out their calculator and check the results, without knowing any programming. That's really the killer feature.

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