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When making instacalc I had some of the same issues -- why do we emulate the existing calculator with its limitations? I feel spreadsheets are the other extrem
by kalid 17y ago
When making instacalc I had some of the same issues -- why do we emulate the existing calculator with its limitations?
I feel spreadsheets are the other extreme of interface overload -- way too much power. There's nothing in between (you get 1 editable field with calc.exe, and hundreds of thousands in Excel).
In my own usage I want to optimize the 90% use case, like an interactive "back of the envelope":
* Real-time editing & results
* Show the few calculations I care about at once (both question and answer)
* Ignore gritty programming details (does variable case matter? Do _spaces_ matter? Why can't a name be "net sales = 3")
* Make difficult conversions easy ("15 cows/day in minutes per cow").
There's always tradeoffs between familiarity & forging a new direction.
- Groxx 17y agoSpreadsheets strike me as way too much abstraction, rather than power. Both for most users, however. They're also generally quite poor abstraction, IMO, as relational connections are often very hard to show without being way over the average proficient user's skill level, and spending a lot more time creating a pretty display sheet rather than leaving it all in rows & columns. That said, a lot of that is because people abuse Excel horribly, to do everything and wash the dishes and walk the dog.