VisiCalc is really cool. I think it was probably the earliest "killer app" — you would buy a computer literally to use VisiCalc. As an engineer... I've always

VisiCalc is really cool. I think it was probably the earliest "killer app" — you would buy a computer literally to use VisiCalc. As an engineer... I've always struggled with understanding spreadsheets. To me, it always seemed that writing code was strictly better. For example, as somebody mentions further down the thread, spreadsheets don't a) connect to external datasources easily, b) are very limited in terms of their UI (cells only!), and c) are impossible to manage, version control, and distribute. It's why I started working on a project called Retool (https://tryretool.com https://tryretool.com). It's basically Excel, but every cell is a React component. And we don't store any data ourselves — we connect to whatever datasource you want to connect to — whether a database (postgres, mysql, etc.), or a HTTP / REST API (stripe, salesforce, etc.). And it's hosted by us on the cloud (or by you, in your own AWS), so distribution is easy: we handle deployments, authentication, authorization, etc. for you. The goal is to let developers build a certain class of software really fast (for us, custom internal applications). Most internal applications are incredibly boring (tables, textinputs, buttons, etc.), and all do similar things (CRUD, basically). It looks like there are a lot of hardcore spreadsheet users + engineers here... if you guys have any feedback, that'd be really appreciated. We just got started, and are looking for literally any feedback :). Thanks!