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Given this, have you or anyone else heard of a "programmer's spreadsheet" that allowed for more advanced computations? I know that the beauty of Excel is that i

by snazz 7y ago

Given this, have you or anyone else heard of a "programmer's spreadsheet" that allowed for more advanced computations? I know that the beauty of Excel is that it is ubiquitous, but there's a lot of historical baggage that could be cut out and it could be integrated with a more proper programming language (and potentially SQLite or another database as the backend).

partialrecall 7y ago
Maybe org-mode in Emacs? I know that can function as a spreadsheet of sorts, and I expect it probably gives you access to the full power of elisp. (I have minimal experience with using org-mode in this manner though.) This gets a bit further away from the everyman-programmer ideal embodied by Excel though. I have been personally experimenting with user-extensible software backed by sqlite designed for organizing files by tags. I've found that given the right primitives, the right DSL, extending the program to create novel queries is a lot of fun and possibly even approachable for 'non-programmers'.
- orhmeh09 7y ago
  User-extensible software to organize files, based on SQLite? Have you looked into Fossil SCM? It’s a version control system built on SQLite, but it has additional features like wiki, forum, scripting , and an extensible ticketing system.
  - partialrecall 7y ago
    I'm familiar with fossil albeit not the technical details. Mine is not a version control system and it doesn't actually store files. Rather, it maintains an association between filenames (absolute paths) and sets of tags. There are some tradeoffs with such a scheme, but my priorities were that it should be non-invasive and keep filesystem access to a bare minimum. Something that you can use to organize a cluttered nfs-mounted NAS without actually moving the files (in case you later decide the system is not for you, everything is in the same place as before you started.) It's basically a relational 'card catalogue' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog)
lazyasciiart 7y ago
I don't know how well they live up to it, but my understanding from advertising is that AirTable and SmartSheet describe themselves as doing this.
lonelappde 7y ago
Is C#.NET not a proper programming language? The worst thing about excel is the standard Excel library, and the perlishness nature of the UI's "render text into data types by heuristics, not simple consistent rules"
tryptophan 7y ago
The pandas python library? Its like excel, with no GUI, and extra features.
JNRowe 7y ago
Resolver One¹ /was/ an interesting take on a programmer's spreadsheet. Reading about it again still feels a little exciting. I remember loads of people talking about it at PyCon, ƛdon, and -- I think -- AngloHaskell(Haskell confs often feel like ~50% quants to me). Don't really recall anyone actually using it for real work though. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolver_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolver_One
psv1 7y ago
Doesn't any data frame interface in Python/R/Julia fit the description? (pandas, data.frame, data.table, dplyr etc.)

by snazz 7y ago

partialrecall 7y ago

Maybe org-mode in Emacs? I know that can function as a spreadsheet of sorts, and I expect it probably gives you access to the full power of elisp. (I have minimal experience with using org-mode in this manner though.) This gets a bit further away from the everyman-programmer ideal embodied by Excel though. I have been personally experimenting with user-extensible software backed by sqlite designed for organizing files by tags. I've found that given the right primitives, the right DSL, extending the program to create novel queries is a lot of fun and possibly even approachable for 'non-programmers'.

orhmeh09 7y ago
User-extensible software to organize files, based on SQLite? Have you looked into Fossil SCM? It’s a version control system built on SQLite, but it has additional features like wiki, forum, scripting , and an extensible ticketing system.
- partialrecall 7y ago
  I'm familiar with fossil albeit not the technical details. Mine is not a version control system and it doesn't actually store files. Rather, it maintains an association between filenames (absolute paths) and sets of tags. There are some tradeoffs with such a scheme, but my priorities were that it should be non-invasive and keep filesystem access to a bare minimum. Something that you can use to organize a cluttered nfs-mounted NAS without actually moving the files (in case you later decide the system is not for you, everything is in the same place as before you started.) It's basically a relational 'card catalogue' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog)

lazyasciiart 7y ago

I don't know how well they live up to it, but my understanding from advertising is that AirTable and SmartSheet describe themselves as doing this.

lonelappde 7y ago

Is C#.NET not a proper programming language? The worst thing about excel is the standard Excel library, and the perlishness nature of the UI's "render text into data types by heuristics, not simple consistent rules"

tryptophan 7y ago

The pandas python library? Its like excel, with no GUI, and extra features.

JNRowe 7y ago

Resolver One¹ /was/ an interesting take on a programmer's spreadsheet. Reading about it again still feels a little exciting. I remember loads of people talking about it at PyCon, ƛdon, and -- I think -- AngloHaskell(Haskell confs often feel like ~50% quants to me). Don't really recall anyone actually using it for real work though. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolver_One https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolver_One

psv1 7y ago

Doesn't any data frame interface in Python/R/Julia fit the description? (pandas, data.frame, data.table, dplyr etc.)