4 ms·

A Spreadsheet and a Debugger Walk into a Shell

224 points by JNRowe 2y ago

hnlmorg 2y ago
There’s some seriously impressive work that’s gone into that shell
sim7c00 2y ago
re-inventing the shell, not the wheel. love it!
sigmonsays 2y ago
this looks really great I need to follow this more closely. I tried installing cat9 (from them as well) and it didn't work out on nixos. Might take another stab at it
24currynigger 2y ago
[flagged]
myponybaloney 2y ago
So cool! I'd never thought about a spreadsheet interface for the shell, but it makes total sense. The other demos (a little more than halfway down the page) are amazing too: https://arcan-fe.com/2022/04/02/the-day-of-a-new-command-line-interface-shell/ https://arcan-fe.com/2022/04/02/the-day-of-a-new-command-lin...
- pwg 2y ago
  While not a shell built-in, the 'sc' command provides a terminal spreadsheet: sc: the Venerable Spreadsheet Calculator https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699
- simonjgreen 2y ago
  Oof this comment makes me feel old. My first encounters with spreadsheets were in text mode dos.
  - wordpad25 2y ago
    Total Commander keeps DOS UI alive and is a popular alternative to explorer.
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      Supports Windows® 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10/11, and Windows® 3.1. That's some dedication.
3rdworldeng 2y ago
Liked a lot, great job!
jmward01 2y ago
A machine learning program walks into a bar. (loss .999) A machine learning program walks into a bar. (loss .625) A machine learning program ducks a bar. (loss .482)
pkphilip 2y ago
Brings back memories of Lotus 123
systems 2y ago
i am surprised emacs doesn't have this already emacs seems more like the right place for this that being said, i think the spreadsheet being a separate command line tool make more sense, i dont understand why integrate it into the shell nushell or pwsh, might make use of a spreadsheet view, since they pass or stream objects not text , but still the spreadsheet should be a separate program
- xk3 2y ago
  nushell has `open file.xlsx | explore --peek` which can be used to interactively select a cell contents from an Excel spreadsheet and pipe it into another command. It would be cool if there were similar tools for editing table data. See also the `inspect` command... I feel like they could add a lot of neat Smalltalk-like interactivity (Bret Victor-level observability)
  - systems 2y ago
    in pwsh you can Out-GridView which gives you a full graphical view, you cannot edit data, and its usually the last step in a pipeline between nushell and pwsh, i think pwsh is the way to go, only drawback it required dotnet installed, nushell being more standalone beat it on this
    - rrrix1 2y ago
      I have always felt pwsh is one of those "great idea, poorly implemented" things. I mean, who puts Verbs-InCommandNames? No one who wants to actually remember all of their CLI tools. That's who.
      - systems 2y ago
        well, its a convention , it makes it easier to guess the command name, and considering in pwsh you have hundreds of commands, finding the command can be a challenge pwsh have autocomplete and command to help you find other commands pwsh is actually more unixy than unix, it have more specialized commands in linux you have bigger command, commands that do at lot, and take a lot to learn pwsh is a great idea, implemented very nicely, i dont see any major flaws , except poor adoption on linux .. and of course dotnet dependency a native pwsh would be amazing
guestbest 2y ago
This reminds me of using smalltalk where everything is an object and output can be piped in to any structure that can be programmed
- shoggouth 2y ago
  Could you elaborate?
  - guestbest 2y ago
    A spreadsheet it just a view broken up in to rectangle cells and that compares favorably to the JavaScript smalltalk variants I’ve seen online such as this one https://amber-lang.net/ https://amber-lang.net/ The output when it’s not an error message can redirected in to another function and so on and so forth until it’s not entirely programming and not entirely a prebuilt interface. A smalltalk VM is like an operating system as a repl as long as you’re skilled enough to not keep hitting error messages.

224 points by JNRowe 2y ago

hnlmorg 2y ago

There’s some seriously impressive work that’s gone into that shell

sim7c00 2y ago

re-inventing the shell, not the wheel. love it!

sigmonsays 2y ago

this looks really great I need to follow this more closely. I tried installing cat9 (from them as well) and it didn't work out on nixos. Might take another stab at it

24currynigger 2y ago

[flagged]

myponybaloney 2y ago

So cool! I'd never thought about a spreadsheet interface for the shell, but it makes total sense. The other demos (a little more than halfway down the page) are amazing too: https://arcan-fe.com/2022/04/02/the-day-of-a-new-command-line-interface-shell/ https://arcan-fe.com/2022/04/02/the-day-of-a-new-command-lin...

pwg 2y ago
While not a shell built-in, the 'sc' command provides a terminal spreadsheet: sc: the Venerable Spreadsheet Calculator https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699
simonjgreen 2y ago
Oof this comment makes me feel old. My first encounters with spreadsheets were in text mode dos.
- wordpad25 2y ago
  Total Commander keeps DOS UI alive and is a popular alternative to explorer.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    Supports Windows® 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10/11, and Windows® 3.1. That's some dedication.

3rdworldeng 2y ago

Liked a lot, great job!

jmward01 2y ago

A machine learning program walks into a bar. (loss .999) A machine learning program walks into a bar. (loss .625) A machine learning program ducks a bar. (loss .482)

pkphilip 2y ago

Brings back memories of Lotus 123

systems 2y ago

i am surprised emacs doesn't have this already emacs seems more like the right place for this that being said, i think the spreadsheet being a separate command line tool make more sense, i dont understand why integrate it into the shell nushell or pwsh, might make use of a spreadsheet view, since they pass or stream objects not text , but still the spreadsheet should be a separate program

xk3 2y ago
nushell has `open file.xlsx | explore --peek` which can be used to interactively select a cell contents from an Excel spreadsheet and pipe it into another command. It would be cool if there were similar tools for editing table data. See also the `inspect` command... I feel like they could add a lot of neat Smalltalk-like interactivity (Bret Victor-level observability)
- systems 2y ago
  in pwsh you can Out-GridView which gives you a full graphical view, you cannot edit data, and its usually the last step in a pipeline between nushell and pwsh, i think pwsh is the way to go, only drawback it required dotnet installed, nushell being more standalone beat it on this
  - rrrix1 2y ago
    I have always felt pwsh is one of those "great idea, poorly implemented" things. I mean, who puts Verbs-InCommandNames? No one who wants to actually remember all of their CLI tools. That's who.
    - systems 2y ago
      well, its a convention , it makes it easier to guess the command name, and considering in pwsh you have hundreds of commands, finding the command can be a challenge pwsh have autocomplete and command to help you find other commands pwsh is actually more unixy than unix, it have more specialized commands in linux you have bigger command, commands that do at lot, and take a lot to learn pwsh is a great idea, implemented very nicely, i dont see any major flaws , except poor adoption on linux .. and of course dotnet dependency a native pwsh would be amazing

guestbest 2y ago

This reminds me of using smalltalk where everything is an object and output can be piped in to any structure that can be programmed

shoggouth 2y ago
Could you elaborate?
- guestbest 2y ago
  A spreadsheet it just a view broken up in to rectangle cells and that compares favorably to the JavaScript smalltalk variants I’ve seen online such as this one https://amber-lang.net/ https://amber-lang.net/ The output when it’s not an error message can redirected in to another function and so on and so forth until it’s not entirely programming and not entirely a prebuilt interface. A smalltalk VM is like an operating system as a repl as long as you’re skilled enough to not keep hitting error messages.