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I've always found these apps interesting, I feel like if Microsoft added one of these to their office suite, it would replace a lot of use cases that people oth

I've always found these apps interesting, I feel like if Microsoft added one of these to their office suite, it would replace a lot of use cases that people otherwise abuse spreadsheets for. I'd love to find a self-hosted version of one of these but at the same time wonder if I'd just end up reaching for a jupyter notebook instead.

monkmartinez 4y ago
Integration with OneNote would be a killer feature. I do a lot of price comparisons and abuse spreadsheets all the time. I have to convert many unit types to ensure apples to apples comparisons which are difficult to keep in your head. So I end up with mangled spreadsheets with tons of text and numbers. Obviously, not the intended use case for spreadsheets.
montagg 4y ago
I’ve used Soulver on the mac to replace a spreadsheet for personal finances and it is amazing. Does a lot of what this does but with better natural language integration and a whole ton of useful functions like compound interest/loan calculations, stock prices, currency conversion, hex math, etc
- deepfriedbits 4y ago
  Love Soulver. It's such a well-made app. My problem is that I use it so infrequently that I often forget I have it.
analog31 4y ago
Microsoft is so close -- after all the office suite already has a built in macro language. I tolerated that language because it was part of my "thinking" app -- Excel -- for so many years. As a non-expert in programming languages, I couldn't fault it in any way, except for being proprietary. Today, I've gotten to the point where I can barely use any document editing app that doesn't let me insert a code cell, which means for all intents and purposes, Jupyter. Every other authoring tool requires me to copy and paste -- from Jupyter.
archagon 4y ago
Calca is what I use for this, and I think it has a Windows version. Excellent app, though in maintenance mode as far as I can tell.
- Obscurity4340 4y ago
  Soulver's more versatile and dynamic but also only for iOS/Mac, methinks
kagevf 4y ago
> I'd love to find a self-hosted version of one of these Emacs org mode has entered the chat … In all seriousness, and depending on your use case, tables and executable code blocks come in handy a lot.

monkmartinez 4y ago

Integration with OneNote would be a killer feature. I do a lot of price comparisons and abuse spreadsheets all the time. I have to convert many unit types to ensure apples to apples comparisons which are difficult to keep in your head. So I end up with mangled spreadsheets with tons of text and numbers. Obviously, not the intended use case for spreadsheets.

montagg 4y ago

I’ve used Soulver on the mac to replace a spreadsheet for personal finances and it is amazing. Does a lot of what this does but with better natural language integration and a whole ton of useful functions like compound interest/loan calculations, stock prices, currency conversion, hex math, etc

deepfriedbits 4y ago
Love Soulver. It's such a well-made app. My problem is that I use it so infrequently that I often forget I have it.

analog31 4y ago

Microsoft is so close -- after all the office suite already has a built in macro language. I tolerated that language because it was part of my "thinking" app -- Excel -- for so many years. As a non-expert in programming languages, I couldn't fault it in any way, except for being proprietary. Today, I've gotten to the point where I can barely use any document editing app that doesn't let me insert a code cell, which means for all intents and purposes, Jupyter. Every other authoring tool requires me to copy and paste -- from Jupyter.

archagon 4y ago

Calca is what I use for this, and I think it has a Windows version. Excellent app, though in maintenance mode as far as I can tell.

Obscurity4340 4y ago
Soulver's more versatile and dynamic but also only for iOS/Mac, methinks

kagevf 4y ago

> I'd love to find a self-hosted version of one of these Emacs org mode has entered the chat … In all seriousness, and depending on your use case, tables and executable code blocks come in handy a lot.