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From a sloppy reading of the headline I first thought this was some way of making Excel (optionally) typed, sort of like moving from JavaScript to TypeScript.
by tpmx 6y ago
From a sloppy reading of the headline I first thought this was some way of making Excel (optionally) typed, sort of like moving from JavaScript to TypeScript.
I wonder if this could work? It's an interesting idea, I think. I'm sure there have been attempts in the past...
I guess you would be able to assign both normal units and compound units to cells (like m and m/s^2) as "formatting" and do type checking when editing a cell that references other cells.
- philsnow 6y agoThis is exactly what I thought. The things it's bringing in don't seem like "types", they seem like "rich structured data objects, usually imported from the web, that live in cells on sheets so you can refer to in formulas". I wanted cells to have types -- not just dimensions like meters and volts but arbitrary composeable tags with a tag arithmetic, so that you can make it impossible to (or at least easy to notice when you) add "daily active users" and "monthly active users". I read a thread here on HN just a couple days ago about people whose job it is to pore through spreadsheets that drive trillions of dollars for companies and find logical errors (like the above nonsensical addition of two numbers that don't make sense), and that they save companies hundreds of millions by preventing mistakes in planning etc. Maybe I'm missing the point, but compared to real types, who cares about bringing a rich structured data object describing hydrogen into a spreadsheet?
- tpmx 6y agoYeah, pretty much. Obviously you'd need to able to create your own units, in addition to e.g. the SI system.