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I've often wondered about a missing application: "Excel for graphs". Just like Excel for tabular data, it would support RAM-sized data (enough to require a com

I've often wondered about a missing application: "Excel for graphs". Just like Excel for tabular data, it would support RAM-sized data (enough to require a computer, but not so much that you need a data center), implement lots of algorithms and visualizations "well enough", and require no programming skill to operate. As the article says, a lot of our real-world problems are graph problems - why are programmers the only ones who should have the tools to solve them?

matusp 3y ago
Yeah, I feel like the article is too quick with its conclusions. Many other problems can be made arbitrary complex and difficult with additional requirements. But there are still data structure and standard libraries to provide good enough experience that fits most use-cases. And if you need something extra spicy you need to build a custom solution. The article claims that graphs are often just too big, but yeah, if you ask people who are actively working on graph algorithms they might have that sort of experience. But most programmers and users probably only work with really small graphs.
jonahss 3y ago
I agree. And I think the key to this is VR. Another comment in this thread is about how hard graphs are to visualize, but a 3D interface gives you a lot more room. When VR hype began I thought "well what's the excel of VR?". Microsoft's answer was "2D spreadsheets floating in 3D space". What nonsense. I think graphs. email my username at gmail.com if anyone is interested in exploring this together!
roenxi 3y ago
> As the article says, a lot of our real-world problems are graph problems The article struggles to back that up though. Eg, it notes that the internet can be modelled with a graph. Undeniably true. But so what? The internet can be represented as many different things and it is unclear that representing it as a graph has any generically useful engineering implications. There is an argument that is just as good that representing the internet as a neural-network (ie, a black-box matrix-encoded function of arbitrary inputs to coherent outputs) is the ideal representation for getting useful info out of it. Maybe for someone like Google that is a billion-dollar idea (even then though, it might not be - I don't know if they represent their index as a graph or not). But the internet overall isn't much of a graph problem to many other people, and representing it as a graph doesn't solve much. It is rare to see someone solving a real-life problem on paper as a graph. Using tables happens all the time. Graphs are common, graph problems are uncommon.
BlindEyeHalo 3y ago
> As the article says, a lot of our real-world problems are graph problems - why are programmers the only ones who should have the tools to solve them? I think programmers and mathematicians are the only ones that model these problems as graphs. I doubt a casual person sees graphs in random real world problems. And something I learned working in a big corporations, everything can be an excel spreadsheet if you try hard enough.
alok-g 3y ago
The following are not exactly what you have asked for. https://gephi.org/ https://gephi.org/ This implements lots of graph visualization algorithms. https://strlen.com/treesheets/ https://strlen.com/treesheets/ Excel for tree data.

matusp 3y ago

Yeah, I feel like the article is too quick with its conclusions. Many other problems can be made arbitrary complex and difficult with additional requirements. But there are still data structure and standard libraries to provide good enough experience that fits most use-cases. And if you need something extra spicy you need to build a custom solution. The article claims that graphs are often just too big, but yeah, if you ask people who are actively working on graph algorithms they might have that sort of experience. But most programmers and users probably only work with really small graphs.

jonahss 3y ago

I agree. And I think the key to this is VR. Another comment in this thread is about how hard graphs are to visualize, but a 3D interface gives you a lot more room. When VR hype began I thought "well what's the excel of VR?". Microsoft's answer was "2D spreadsheets floating in 3D space". What nonsense. I think graphs. email my username at gmail.com if anyone is interested in exploring this together!

roenxi 3y ago

> As the article says, a lot of our real-world problems are graph problems The article struggles to back that up though. Eg, it notes that the internet can be modelled with a graph. Undeniably true. But so what? The internet can be represented as many different things and it is unclear that representing it as a graph has any generically useful engineering implications. There is an argument that is just as good that representing the internet as a neural-network (ie, a black-box matrix-encoded function of arbitrary inputs to coherent outputs) is the ideal representation for getting useful info out of it. Maybe for someone like Google that is a billion-dollar idea (even then though, it might not be - I don't know if they represent their index as a graph or not). But the internet overall isn't much of a graph problem to many other people, and representing it as a graph doesn't solve much. It is rare to see someone solving a real-life problem on paper as a graph. Using tables happens all the time. Graphs are common, graph problems are uncommon.

BlindEyeHalo 3y ago

> As the article says, a lot of our real-world problems are graph problems - why are programmers the only ones who should have the tools to solve them? I think programmers and mathematicians are the only ones that model these problems as graphs. I doubt a casual person sees graphs in random real world problems. And something I learned working in a big corporations, everything can be an excel spreadsheet if you try hard enough.

alok-g 3y ago

The following are not exactly what you have asked for. https://gephi.org/ https://gephi.org/ This implements lots of graph visualization algorithms. https://strlen.com/treesheets/ https://strlen.com/treesheets/ Excel for tree data.