5 ms·
The ability to just freely type in a table and it keeps it aligned automatically with basically ASCII art, and allows me to sort or rearrange lines or columns,
by anyfoo 6y ago
The ability to just freely type in a table and it keeps it aligned automatically with basically ASCII art, and allows me to sort or rearrange lines or columns, is just fantastic.
If I really need a "spreadsheet", I will use a dedicated software package (which is sometimes actually Matlab, because often that's what I actually need, except for finance stuff), but so so many times when jotting down notes I just need some hassle-free instant tables.
- earthscienceman 6y agoI don't mean to go all Stallman on you, but MATLAB is the devil's software.
- eigenhombre 6y agoWhy?
- ptman 6y agoLet me guess: because it is proprietary, has a terrible license management experience and there is an open source alternative: https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
- dhagz 6y agoI was going to say because it starts array indexes at 1.
- snicker7 6y agoMost "scientific" languages have indexes starting in 1 and/or configurable (R, Julia, Fortran, APL). In some applications (finite element methods), it makes sense for indexes to start at negative numbers.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoIndexes starting at 1 is good. Offsets starting at 0 is good. Confusing offsets for indexes leads to off-by-one errors. C's "array" notation is taught as being an index, when it's actually an offset.
- anyfoo 6y agoIf Octave were sufficient for me, I think I’d just use SciPy. But I want to use LiveScripts and several other things.
- lordgrenville 6y agoEh, I think in a thread about org-mode that's an appropriate level of Stallman-ness.