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This is the second story on the front page about the weakness of modern spreadsheet software. It could be cool if someone stepped forward and showed us how to d

This is the second story on the front page about the weakness of modern spreadsheet software. It could be cool if someone stepped forward and showed us how to do spreadsheets using everything we now know, like what git did with source control back in the mid 2000s.

raybb 6y ago
Can you link to the other story? I'm not seeing it.
- reallydontask 6y ago
  there you go https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam... edit: HN link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070385
WorldMaker 6y ago
What about "Don't use spreadsheets"? It's a flippant answer, sure, but spreadsheets are the index cards, sticky notes, and yarn approach to data organization. Certainly they are easy and approachable to use, but any sufficiently complex data set in general is going to be more "chaotic mind corkboard mess" than "organized". Spreadsheets are very useful data hammer, but not all data is a nail; to borrow another aphorism. That said, there's a wide gulf in the general user approachability between spreadsheet applications and more bespoke/"better" data organization options. Decades of experiences and mistakes learned from tools like DB2, FoxPro, and Access have shown us we have a hard time finding an "easy medium". AirTable thinks they have some modern ideas. Microsoft's PowerApps teams have their own modern approaches (and as almost the direct the inheritors of FoxPro/Access, presumably the most experience to learn from). Simon Willison's work with Datasette (SQLite DBs wrapped in simple view/management webpages) has had some interesting ideas. Though I don't think any one approach will solve it, it might take a whole shelf of tools, and at the end of the day maybe as a species we'll never have as clean of a user experience as the worst spreadsheet.

raybb 6y ago

Can you link to the other story? I'm not seeing it.

reallydontask 6y ago
there you go https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam... edit: HN link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070385

WorldMaker 6y ago

What about "Don't use spreadsheets"? It's a flippant answer, sure, but spreadsheets are the index cards, sticky notes, and yarn approach to data organization. Certainly they are easy and approachable to use, but any sufficiently complex data set in general is going to be more "chaotic mind corkboard mess" than "organized". Spreadsheets are very useful data hammer, but not all data is a nail; to borrow another aphorism. That said, there's a wide gulf in the general user approachability between spreadsheet applications and more bespoke/"better" data organization options. Decades of experiences and mistakes learned from tools like DB2, FoxPro, and Access have shown us we have a hard time finding an "easy medium". AirTable thinks they have some modern ideas. Microsoft's PowerApps teams have their own modern approaches (and as almost the direct the inheritors of FoxPro/Access, presumably the most experience to learn from). Simon Willison's work with Datasette (SQLite DBs wrapped in simple view/management webpages) has had some interesting ideas. Though I don't think any one approach will solve it, it might take a whole shelf of tools, and at the end of the day maybe as a species we'll never have as clean of a user experience as the worst spreadsheet.