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This seems to duplicate a lot of the functionality of Airtable (https://airtable.com/ https://airtable.com/). Anyone catch what it's doing new?

david927 10y ago
The idea has been around at least since 1981 when Adele Goldberg at PARC implemented something like this. I think that Kayia (http://kayia.org http://kayia.org) is also similar but more relational than both this and AirTable.
- mattmccutchen 10y ago
  Kayia had intrigued me before but I seem to have lost my notes about it, so I watched the video again. I confess I still don't feel like I have a solid understanding of the semantics. It looks like Kayia (like many general-purpose programming languages) has more than enough flexibility to set things up so that applications can be built with similarly clean code as in Object Spreadsheets, but also enough flexibility for novice users to mess things up in unobvious ways once they start creating nontrivial nested structures. I believe we're better off enforcing a schema and showing the entire hierarchical data set on one screen so novice users can recognize more quickly when something isn't the way they want. (For large data sets, we may need folding, or drill-down in separate windows as in Kayia may even be preferable, but showing everything at once is a great place to start to build user understanding of the tool on small data sets.)
  - david927 10y ago
    I need first to say that you should be commended on working on Object Spreadsheets. Alan Kay has always warmly received anything effort in that space -- it's simply neglected and for no clear reason. For Kayia, you can set constraints which enforce schema, if you want, but it's not recommended. I would rather have too much flexibility for novice users than not enough, because that's the side we err on. We often (I'm speaking generally) remove complexity by removing or limiting function, and I disagree with that, philosophically. I would rather steer than stop.
mattmccutchen 10y ago
I just ran through our "simplified parent-teacher conference" example in Airtable. It looks like the main things Object Spreadsheets has and Airtable doesn't are: 1. Object nesting for the purposes of the spreadsheet UI and cascading deletion. 2. Computed fields that return a set of object references (as real references that can be a starting point for further formulas, not just a string of comma-separated names), which we use to implement the "availableSlot" field in the example. 3. Computed object types, which can be used to map a formula over a set of values returned by another formula, keeping everything in context (as opposed to defining a separate database view). These are not used in the simplified parent-teacher conference. An example can be seen in the "view model" of the full parent-teacher conference, but a better example that demonstrates the need for them is described in section 4.4 of our paper (http://sdg.csail.mit.edu/projects/objsheets/objsheets-onward2016-preprint.pdf http://sdg.csail.mit.edu/projects/objsheets/objsheets-onward...). Many of the other tools we have tested, including Knack, Intuit QuickBase, and Microsoft Access, are also missing these three features.

david927 10y ago

The idea has been around at least since 1981 when Adele Goldberg at PARC implemented something like this. I think that Kayia (http://kayia.org http://kayia.org) is also similar but more relational than both this and AirTable.

mattmccutchen 10y ago
Kayia had intrigued me before but I seem to have lost my notes about it, so I watched the video again. I confess I still don't feel like I have a solid understanding of the semantics. It looks like Kayia (like many general-purpose programming languages) has more than enough flexibility to set things up so that applications can be built with similarly clean code as in Object Spreadsheets, but also enough flexibility for novice users to mess things up in unobvious ways once they start creating nontrivial nested structures. I believe we're better off enforcing a schema and showing the entire hierarchical data set on one screen so novice users can recognize more quickly when something isn't the way they want. (For large data sets, we may need folding, or drill-down in separate windows as in Kayia may even be preferable, but showing everything at once is a great place to start to build user understanding of the tool on small data sets.)
- david927 10y ago
  I need first to say that you should be commended on working on Object Spreadsheets. Alan Kay has always warmly received anything effort in that space -- it's simply neglected and for no clear reason. For Kayia, you can set constraints which enforce schema, if you want, but it's not recommended. I would rather have too much flexibility for novice users than not enough, because that's the side we err on. We often (I'm speaking generally) remove complexity by removing or limiting function, and I disagree with that, philosophically. I would rather steer than stop.

mattmccutchen 10y ago

I just ran through our "simplified parent-teacher conference" example in Airtable. It looks like the main things Object Spreadsheets has and Airtable doesn't are: 1. Object nesting for the purposes of the spreadsheet UI and cascading deletion. 2. Computed fields that return a set of object references (as real references that can be a starting point for further formulas, not just a string of comma-separated names), which we use to implement the "availableSlot" field in the example. 3. Computed object types, which can be used to map a formula over a set of values returned by another formula, keeping everything in context (as opposed to defining a separate database view). These are not used in the simplified parent-teacher conference. An example can be seen in the "view model" of the full parent-teacher conference, but a better example that demonstrates the need for them is described in section 4.4 of our paper (http://sdg.csail.mit.edu/projects/objsheets/objsheets-onward2016-preprint.pdf http://sdg.csail.mit.edu/projects/objsheets/objsheets-onward...). Many of the other tools we have tested, including Knack, Intuit QuickBase, and Microsoft Access, are also missing these three features.