27 ms·

I only use Google Sheets

370 points by mugamuga 1y ago

tcfhgj 1y ago
I am amazed how many people just upload everything to Google without a second thought
glimshe 1y ago
And it all started with Visicalc. The spreadsheet and the word processor are the most important computer programs ever created. No wonder Google and Microsoft still make billions from these two.
- salviati 1y ago
  I would argue that the compiler is the most important computer program. Or maybe that it doesn't make that much sense to look for a most important program.
  - failingforward 1y ago
    s/programs/applications/
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Yep they were the original "killer apps" and still are. They are the reason that PCs gained traction in businesses in the 1980s. I helped my chemistry teacher in High School back then to use Visicalc on a TRS-80 as a gradebook. Almost anyone who has used a computer for work has used a spreadsheet for something, whether managing simple lists, or something much more complicated.
salviati 1y ago
Reminds me of "Ask HN: Is the world run by badly updated Excel sheets?" [0] You need experience to see the shorcomings of spreadsheets. No version control. No tests. In general it's good for things that don't need to evolve, but stay the same (most likely because they're short lived). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611431 [EDIT] An example of a comment from that thread pointing in this direction: > In general, you adapt to the excel owner's quirks, not vice versa. If you don't like it you should create an excel sheet of your own and copy/paste, which people also do. > I knew a project manager who's job seemed to be reconciling multiple versions of a spreadsheet with different authors.
- PanoptesYC 1y ago
  I've mostly seen the problem manifest when information is spread across a multitude of spreadsheets all stored in different places. The people involved don't know which spreadsheets contain what information and which are supposed to. Sometimes they end up having conflicting data purely because they don't realise that someone else thinks the primary source is spreadsheet A while they're only making changes to spreadsheet B. Any flaws with Excel haven't been due to the actual program or data, but just how the files are managed within projects. Labyrinthian sharepoints, files being forgotten about on network storage, etc.
  - Qem 1y ago
    > Any flaws with Excel haven't been due to the actual program or data, but just how the files are managed within projects. Not sure of that. Examples: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167947308001606 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01679... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  > No version control You can use version control with Excel spreadsheets, though it's not very good. It's called "track changes" and even has a limited capacity to approve/reject changes from other people. Very few people uses that feature, especially not the people who have built a Rube Goldberg machine to run their business processes, but you could do it if you wanted to.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    The people who have "built a Rube Goldberg machine to run their business processes" should have used a database not a spreadsheet. Though they likely don't have enough training in database design and so if they had their result would be worse - but that is the fault of their lack of training. To be fair, database training is not something they should have in their position
adrianbooth17 1y ago
I use Google Sheets for all my finances, it's great. I have an Expense Tracker UI within Google Sheets that allows me to submit expenses to the main sheet (currently just over 5000 rows of expenses over the last few years) I only just recently vibe coded a web UI tool that uses a Google Service Account to add expenses to this Google Sheet for me, and then created a Progressive Web App from that so I could do everything on my phone. In summary, Google Sheets is sometimes all you need instead of a database for very simple applications (and built for an audience of one)
- bdcravens 1y ago
  I've done the same for a long time. I've tried so many purpose-built alternatives, and always come back to my solution. (Funny enough, Microsoft Money from 20+ years ago is closer to what I'd like than anything available today) Not to say there aren't features I wish I could easily have. I could of course build it, and I've "started" so many times, but after a few hours of the typical boilerplate code you have to deal with, I'd always give up and go back to my surefire solution. (This was before vibe coding, so I may take a stab at that)
benterix 1y ago
2000's: I use Excel for everything 2010's: I use Google Sheets for everything 2020's: I use Etherpad[0] for everything [0] Or any other alternative for that matter
- brazukadev 1y ago
  Real 2020's: I use TikTok/Instagram/YouTube for everything
  - mixcocam 1y ago
    +1
  - lomase 1y ago
    I use LLMs for everything.
dvh 1y ago
I haven't used Google sheets for maybe 2 years, didn't have the need, but week ago I needed to send customer a table that will be updated every couple of days. I was surprised how slow it is. Table has 40 lines and 8 columns, static text only, and it takes 12s until I can edit it. For what it is (adding sentence every 3 day) it's ok but if I had to actually use it for myself on a daily basis it would drive me mad.
- _zoltan_ 1y ago
  I use it daily and have never had this problem.
- maccard 1y ago
  I run my household budgetting off google sheets - a clean load of 8 sheets, wth 20-200 rows and 20-50 columns including some simple cross-sheet formulas is fully loaded and interactive in less than 2 seconds. My work's sharepoint based Excel roadmap doc is 40 rows of 8 columns and takes about 15 seconds from clicking the link to actually being readable, for comparison.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  It should be lightning fast for what you're describing. All I can guess is you have some browser extension interfering? Maybe one that is blocking certain calls Google uses and the sheet doesn't load until they time out? If you're running an adblocker or blocking trackers or anything like that, try disabling those to see if that makes a difference. Otherwise check the network tab of the dev console to see what seems to be slow.
- bdcravens 1y ago
  Definitely something more going on, like some deeply nested functions.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  I manage all the information for every parcel in my city in Google Sheets. It is > 29k rows x dozens of columns and it is instantly interactive when I visit the bookmarked URL.
greymalik 1y ago
It’s amazing to me how well Fred Brooks’ insights from 50 years ago hold up (plan to throw one away, in this case).
cjs_ac 1y ago
> To cut things short, always use the easiest solution to solve a particular problem and once that solution does not work for the business anymore reassess what the new requirements are and either try enhance the current solution or find an alternative that better solve the problem. When solving a problem, solve the problem you have, not the problem you think you might have in the future, or the problem you wish you had. Your solution will prove inadequate in the future, but you are unlikely to correctly predict in what way your solution will be inadequate.
- f1shy 1y ago
  But: if it is not more work, you can solve your problem by solving a family of problems around your problem in the problem space, making the solution robust, as small changes in the problem definition can easily be catached by small changes in your solution. That should, with no extra work, solve future problems.
  - nashashmi 1y ago
    I think you are saying you should be structured well enough to change your system to solve future problems. Like do you really need a dashboard on day 1? Or reports on day 2? Sometimes you just need a log of data. And the columns can grow and shrink.
- chii 1y ago
  > you are unlikely to correctly predict in what way your solution will be inadequate but you can choose a current solution that does not block nor inhibit a future solution. As they say, always keep your options open, and don't vendor lock-in yourself into a corner.
- t_mann 1y ago
  > Your solution will prove inadequate in the future, but you are unlikely to correctly predict in what way your solution will be inadequate. One inadequacy could be complete dependency on a vendor who accidentally locks you out of all your services or starts scalping you with ever higher fees. That one is quite predictable here.
paseante 1y ago
Well, did you suggest it to your boss? how did it go? bad organization is a two way resposability, except in the army.
mft_ 1y ago
I've long argued that spreadsheets are essentially a structured programming tool for people that would never imagine they could or would program. And maybe even a gateway drug in a proportion of cases?
- ikaros02 1y ago
  Mary Shaw discusses spreadsheets as an example of vernacular programming in a paper I read: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3480947 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3480947
  - smj-edison 1y ago
    Huh, this is a really fascinating article! I really like how she articulates common myths in software development. However, it feels like her remarks are more targeted at the academic CS community, because I think a lot of her critiques (such as lack of integration thinking) are already internalized by project leads of modern software systems.
- saulpw 1y ago
  The problem is that spreadsheets are an unstructured programming tool. It's like BASIC with all its GOTOs, index-only loops, etc vs C with proper functions and control structures. You can have a structured spreadsheet but it requires discipline that almost no person (and certainly no organization) has.
EverydayBalloon 1y ago
[dead]
TrackerFF 1y ago
One thing I've learned: Never (ever) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I still do not understand, and it was one of the most frustrating "customer support" processes I've ever experienced, and it took years.
- PunchTornado 1y ago
  try being banned by msft. I am still banned for 6 years without doing anything wrong. still lost access to all of my accounts.
  - BoredPositron 1y ago
    My dad got a Trojan and they took over his msft account to buy some Xbox cards. They banned him as well but he took them to small claims in the EU. As usual they didn't show up and he got a ruling to reinstate his account. Was under 100 bucks and he got his account back. If the account is really important I would do the same. There is a 90% chance they won't show.
    - fsckboy 1y ago
      just as a point of interest, in US small claims courts, the judge can award monetary damages, but cannot order somebody to do something (like turn your account on) i'm not sure if this varies by state.
  - AJ007 1y ago
    A good reason why no one should ever have their Windows install linked to a Microsoft account, same for MacOS.
    - throwaway290 1y ago
      Who ever lost apple account by being banned? with no recourse? I don't remember a story like that
brap 1y ago
Absolutely agree with OP. One thing I would add is, sometimes when you need some extra complexity that's too difficult to express or build in Google Sheets, one step above it is Google Colab (or any other Jupyter notebook). Before building a full blown app, I always ask myself: 1. can this just be a spreadsheet? If not, 2. can this just be a Jupyter notebook? And yes, the integration between Sheets and Colab is great.
- vlucas 1y ago
  Or Google Apps Script! You can get a long way with some simple scripts to import data, etc.
- cracki 1y ago
  how do you upgrade some existing "thing" from a google sheet to a colab notebook? I know of the gspread package for python... but I can't see how that gives you anything but the raw data from the sheet. any graphs and interaction (!) and such you would have to redo in jupyter.
- asdff 1y ago
  IMO Jupyter notebook is a big step up in complexity from just writing a python script. You can put block comments in python script just fine. "let me spin up a local web server to view my comments and run my code in serial in an object oriented fashion" no thanks from me.
mixcocam 1y ago
"Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%." - Donald Knuth Start with a gsheet, when it breaks build something else.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Anecdotal, my previous employer had a contract once for a gas storage / exchange, for years their whole business relied on an Excel sheet (basically tracking gas storage transactions from various customers). I don't remember why but they decided to migrate that to a proper application, I think it took a full development team two years to build in all. But it's likely that, as these things go, they added much more features and visualizations on top instead of just a like-for-like replacement. TL;DR that company was bootstrapped successfully on just a spreadsheet.
  - mixcocam 1y ago
    Agreed. That is my point. If that company had built the app from the start it would have died building it.
- Pooge 1y ago
  > Start with a gsheet, when it breaks build something else. Absolutely don't. The one who built the spreadsheet will have changed companies and the "business logic" and the knowledge will be gone with them. You're now stuck with a blackbox that no ones knows the specs of but everybody depends on.
  - wewtyflakes 1y ago
    How is that different than an engineer building out a service implementing material business logic then leaving for another job?
codeulike 1y ago
I can't find who coined it but there's a saying along the lines of "a spreadsheet is the second best tool for any job"
cainxinth 1y ago
See also: Do the simplest thing that could possibly work https://www.seangoedecke.com/the-simplest-thing-that-could-possibly-work/ https://www.seangoedecke.com/the-simplest-thing-that-could-p...
rsynnott 1y ago
I note that this blog isn't a Google Sheet.
- bdcravens 1y ago
  You're right, though it definitely fits into the ethos of don't overcomplicate things. https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/ https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/
douchescript 1y ago
Works as long as you don’t have to ask ”which Google sheet” if you just have one sheet for a particular problem you are not in a world of hurt.
nashashmi 1y ago
This is what we did in Excel. Is Google Sheet better somehow? Or is that only what new age kids know since college has adopted google products?
- johannes1234321 1y ago
  It is "better" in the way that it is easier to share. Sharing Excel sheets and keeping them in sync is tedious. (Even with O365/OneDrive) This may also include sharing between your own devices.
- Loughla 1y ago
  I love excel and use it daily in my bullshit admin job. But google sheets is so much easier if you have more than one person interacting with the data. It just works, easily, every time. Even with 365 or whatever for MS products, they're more cumbersome.
- bdcravens 1y ago
  48 years old, so definitely not a "new age kid" Sharing is the killer feature. Not that you can't share with Office 360 these days, but many of us were sharing Google Sheets years ago when the rest of the world was still sending Excel files as email attachments, and there hasn't been much reason to switch. Probably not used by many, but if you need to break out of basic functions, some may find working in Javascript preferable to VBA.
hn-ifs 1y ago
I suppose the issue here is trusting Google with your personal and business data. Mining that information for targeting advertising aside, it's not unheard of Google locking people out of their accounts with no reasons or obvious recourse. I wonder what the best non-mega corp solution there is for this.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  Cryptpad comes to my mind although I suppose it might lack some features of google sheets but it has a web interface. For a non web interface, things like libreoffice can be good too but I think that you are asking for a web version.. I am not sure if libreoffice has a web version, it seems that they do but I can't find much information and I might recommend crytpad personally so.
jmkd 1y ago
Xoogler here. For my five years we only used Sheets (called Trix internally) for everything from project management, CRM, quarterly planning, reporting, interviewing, finances and so on. This was not because it was a Google product (we used plenty of competitors' products) but because it is so easy to make them good enough for the task that you can move on to getting the job done instead of administrating getting the job done.
- mixcocam 1y ago
  I have heard that at google collaboration happens with: - making lists (google groups) - gsheets - basic real time chat with auto disappear Is that the case? I find that super interesting. No sexy Slack or Teams type of thing?
  - jmkd 1y ago
    That was the case from 2011-2016. I can't say with as much certainty now, but anecdotally, probably similar.
  - B-Con 1y ago
    Chat supports rooms with chat threads without autodisappear. Everyone is in various rooms for their local team, broader team, org, and cross functional stuff. The net effect is Slack-like. There's also the ticket system. Sheets are commonly used by various PMs and TPMs for high level tracking, but IC eng stick with the tickets. It works fine.
- skirmish 1y ago
  I can say that even now lots of machine learning datasets are kept as rows in gSheets and processed by Python running in Colab. In our team, all our evaluations: read input data from gSheet, run model inference, store outputs in gSheet for manual review if needed, process outputs to compute metrics and plot graphs in Colab. It is great because evaluation logic frequently changes, and without Colab you would sit and wait days each time for code reviews and stupid readability approvals. And then, of course, if you want reproducibility, you just check in Colab notebooks into the source control.
niam 1y ago
I'll die on this hill. Google Sheets was phenomenal for prototyping apps and getting quick feedback from users back when I used it in 2015-2020. Back then they had this janky implementation of Mozilla Rhino underpinning their "Apps Script" engine and it still beat the pants off of anything else you could use for free. Certainly you can shoot your feet with the various spreadsheet-isms but if you're diligent about keeping raw data pure (preferably in a completely different sheet inaccessible to users) it does a bangup job of quickly shoving a UI in front of users and letting them realize what they want and iterate on it before calcifying it into a more rigid system.
- ebbi 1y ago
  Exactly this. Worked for a startup that had dogmatic leaders on 'using the best tool' 'spreadsheets are bad' (a trope they just got from people, not having used it themselves). Ended up spending thousands on consultants to build reporting etc that ended up needing to be changed after 6 months because of business/personnel changes. Spreadsheets are the best tool to quickly spin up and make changes to data. I've always thought about a tool to make a 'front-end' version of spreadsheets that end users use, where the layout can be a bit more freeform (i.e. build reports and dashboards in spreadsheet, then 'select' these reports and paste them into a front end WYSIWYG tool).
  - urbandw311er 1y ago
    Check out AirTable it’s exactly this. (Have mentioned it on two comments now, but I’m not affiliated with the company just a big fan)
corry 1y ago
Always overlooked point in these pro/anti-spreadsheet discussions: A spreadsheet gives you a DB, a quickly and easily customized UI, and iterative / easy-to-debug data processing all in a package that everyone in the working world already understands. AND with a freedom that allows the creator to do it however they want. AND it's fairly portable. You can build incredible things in spreadsheets. I remain convinced that it's the most creative and powerful piece of software we have available, especially so for people who can't code. With that power and freedom comes downsides, sure; and we can debate the merits of it being online, or whether this or that vendor is preferable; but my deep appreciation for spreadsheets remains undiminished by these mere trifles. It's the best authoring tool we've ever devised. EDIT TO ADD: the only other thing that seems to 'rhyme' with spreadsheets in the same way is: HyperCard. Flexible workbench that let you stitch together applications, data, UX, etc. RIP HyperCard, may you be never forgotten.
- bluGill 1y ago
  I wish there was a better way to make spreadsheets use a database as a backend. Most of what people do with a spreadsheet would be better done in a database - but a database needs a lot more training to use (if you don't have the training you will make something worse than spreadsheet with your database!)
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    Wasn't Microsoft Access basically that? There's also Google's AppSheet, which may be that too.
    - yomismoaqui 1y ago
      Microsoft Access requires more training (tables, foreign keys...) and from experience most of the people using Excel managed to bend it to do what they wanted. The maintainability of the resulting systems was not great, but they did the job and worse is better I guess..
      - 1y ago
cloudking 1y ago
Built entire businesses on Google Sheets and Apps Script. Powerful combo.
sixhobbits 1y ago
Same, I currently have - My own rough business accounting (download all bank statements and do some pivots and graphing. Real accountants do the real thing, but I like to have a version that makes sense to me and that is up to date) - Personal accounting finance tracking for sharing expenses and tracking living costs over time - Consolidated asset tracking across different projects/accounts etc, just a quick summary that's not perfect but spending 10 minutes a month manually updating it helps keep it in my head too. - A lot of project management (we also have real PM tools, but I keep my own sheets because it's easy and it makes sense to me) - A bunch of quick analytics (I also use metabase, but sometimes it's just faster to create a graph in sheets) Most of the time the sheet is not the _main_ tool I use, but it is the easiest and most useful one, while the others have better integrations, safety mechanisms (I often end up with +500 or whatever in a copy-paste formula error and sometimes don't catch it), and collaborative measures (if you have 2+ people editing the same sheet you're usually going to have a bad time)
- caoxhua 1y ago
  Have you heard of Fina Money? SpreadSheet works, but Fina tries to make it easier to analyze and visualize your finance data from sheets + live banks. It solves the problems you mentioned.
ksec 1y ago
Slightly Off Topic, are there any other online SpreadSheets other than Excel 365 and Google Sheets? Some of them are AirTable like which is CRM focus, but I just want a really simple spreadsheet that is easily accessible and not from Big Tech.
- actuallyalys 1y ago
  I’ve mostly used LibreOffice for personal use and other cases where I don’t want to use Big Tech, but you could try OnlyOffice. I’ve also been interested in Grist, which is more like AirTable but programmed in Python and (relevant to your request) self-hostable. Edit: Depending on your reasons for avoiding big tech, you may want to research the owner of Only Office, which was a Russian company but apparently isn’t anymore? You might want to also try CryptPad, which is based off of OnlyOffice and recommended elsewhere in the comments (which reminded me).
  - zenmac 1y ago
    What's cool about CryptPad is all the data is encrypted behind the # tag key which never gets sent to server. So even the server admin don't have access to the user docs. It has being easy to migrate from server to server. A truly shining example to google doc alternative. It would be great to have some kind of syncthing <-> cryptpad drive, then it can be very nice alternative to even dropbox. Not sure what the development is ATM.
- criddell 1y ago
  The web version of Apple Numbers is pretty good although I suppose it doesn't meet your non-big-tech criteria.
  - ksec 1y ago
    I actually dont have big tech problem, it is just most of the well knowns once are blocked in where I work, and now even Notion is blocked.
- blitt 1y ago
clamorbeclam 1y ago
Funny, I recently departed from the google ecosystem to proton, self hosted nextcloud, kagi, Libreoffice, and Apple Maps. Am I giving up some ease of use? Absolutely! Can I live with it? Absolutely! Can google go fuck itself? Hell yea. Libre office is like missing a limb, but with practice it can do anything I want it to.
- warkdarrior 1y ago
  You have self-hosted Kagi? How?
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Google, Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice, close enough as makes no difference for what the vast majority of people do with spreadsheets. And even for more complex use cases, any of them will most likely be fine. Google probably has the edge if you need real-time sharing with multiple people.
piqufoh 1y ago
> Doing the smallest and easiest solution to a problem as a way to get to know the full scope and then iterating after that if needs be is by far the best solution (for me). 100% -- this is YAGNI (or you-aint-gonna-need-it) and should be among the first things you think about when starting a new project.
kkukshtel 1y ago
This reminds me of this idea of "Minium Viable Airtable" that I think is apt: https://sirupsen.com/minimum-viable-airtable https://sirupsen.com/minimum-viable-airtable
sodapopcan 1y ago
You shouldn't use anything by Google.
patrickscoleman 1y ago
Only tangentially on-topic, but I do all the financial modeling for the past several (early stage) startups I've worked for in Google Sheets. The ease, collaboration/sharing, and array formulas win out over the faster speed for calculations, better shortcuts, cross-workbook linking, and customization in Excel. That said, it's been a few years since I've tried Excel so would love to hear someone convince me to try it again.
- oaktowner 1y ago
  I'm using the MS suite for the first time in over a decade...and the collaborative aspects are still nowhere near Google's. I routinely get problems when multiple people are editing the same content (Word doc, spreadsheet, or PowerPoint). And sometimes the thick client works best, sometimes browser editing works fine...but it's inconsistent. For all of them, Microsoft has a more complete feature set...but for 99% of things (and anything with lots of collaboration), I prefer Google Work Suite or whatever it's called this month.
Mistletoe 1y ago
I’m about to leave Google Sheets because I keep very long spreadsheets about my life and everything I do and it refuses to open at anything but right at the top. So every time I have to scroll and scroll to get to the bottom. Does anyone have a fix for this? Last time I googled all I found was some dingleberry on a Google thread saying that’s how spreadsheets should open. I moved to Google Sheets from Excel online that did that right at least. I moved away from Excel online because it has requirements for small file sizes and the images I would paste in the spreadsheet filled them up to the limit too fast.
- criddell 1y ago
  Doesn't ctrl-end jump to the bottom row of the spreadsheet? Ctrl-down arrow will jump to the last cell in the current column. On a Mac it's cmd rather than ctrl I believe.
Lumoscore 1y ago
I feel this deeply. I only use Google Sheets, too. It sounds crazy, but it’s the best tool for so many random things, and here’s why I stick with it: It Just Works: There's zero fuss. I don't need to install anything, I don't need to save it, and I don't need to worry about the format. It's always there, and it saves automatically. It's Simple to Share: If I need to show something to my spouse, a coworker, or anyone, I just send a link. No one needs to sign up or download some special app. Everyone can open it right away. It's the Perfect Checklist: For managing my own stuff—like a budget, a travel plan, or even just tracking a personal project—a sheet is faster than any fancy app. I can make columns that say "Done," "To Do," or "Waiting," and that's all I need. For most of my personal data and quick shared work, trying to use a dedicated software package is just overkill. Sheets is the easiest way to organize information in a clear, digital table. It's the ultimate low-tech solution to high-tech problems.
aitchnyu 1y ago
Does Google Sheet allow fine grained filtering like "allow customers to see only their own requests" or "allow submissions to be edited within 1 hour"?
mikevm 1y ago
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deleted 1y ago
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kramer2718 1y ago
2015: This meeting could have been an email 2025: This enterprise development project could have been a spreadsheet
sneak 1y ago
Reminder that anything you put into Google for storage is you voluntarily disclosing such information to the United States federal government without a warrant requirement. Due to both the third party doctrine as well as FAA702, the feds do not require warrants to access, copy, process, and store indefinitely all information you provide to Google. Good luck!
dcminter 1y ago
> I entered the workforce about 9 months ago Right or wrong, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to put forth such a definite opinion after less than a year in the workforce. What OP probably misses is the "there ain't nothing so permanent as a temporary solution" thing. I too embrace quick and dirty solutions but only if I have total control over the lifetime of that solution. If someone's going to ask me to deliver it immediately and then build a castle on top of it... I might insist on using a tool that has more up front cost.
- michaelteter 1y ago
  I particularly enjoyed the “every couple of months…” bit. So, about four times?
  - dcminter 1y ago
    'zactly :D I don't want to be too harsh though; I definitely think the attitude of rolling out something simple that works is a solid approach when compared with the gold-plated second-system-syndrome thinking that's terribly easy to fall into. They're not wrong wrong, but there's a bit more nuance to be had once you've seen the monsters that can grown out of a hasty prototype.
- kelnos 1y ago
  Yeah, that line made me nearly laugh out loud. Not saying the author isn't onto something: using the simplest tool that will get your job done -- and bonus points if you can reasonably use the same tool for several things -- is a decent principle to live by. Using an existing tool is great, when it meets your needs without too many difficult trade offs. And where they work, it seems like business requirements are scrapped and rewritten every couple months, so the whole "temporary-haha-yeah-right solution" problem doesn't really rear its head. The rest of us have to deal with the difficult mess several years down the line, because "we'll throw it away and write a new thing once we need to scale" is something that very rarely actually happens. Of course, the author has no experience of a year down the line, let alone several years down the line.
bryanhogan 1y ago
This is honestly one of the things I really like about Notion Databases, at the core they are an online collaborative spreadsheet. But then it can also be given multiple views and different forms such as a calendar, Kanban board, timeline, image gallery, etc., wish more apps would allow something like this, e.g. Obsidian Bases are a great first step.
EGreg 1y ago
Why not use an open source spreadsheet in javascript and html that you can host yourself? You can whip up whatever you want now with an LLM. And with JS it will save whatever you want in indexeddb or pouchdb and export to whatever formats like csv. Why lock into google?
jwr 1y ago
The world is not binary, nor black & white. There is an entire spectrum of solutions between a spreadsheet and a highly-structured app. Sure, you can use a spreadsheet for anything, it's quick, and provides nearly no structure. You can also use a specialized application, tailored for the particular processes at hand, that does error checking on input, validates data integrity, and does not let you break data structures. And there is a whole spectrum in between. One thing to note is that a spreadsheet (OPs insistence on calling it "Google Sheet" is amusing after years of hearing people call it "excel", it's a spreadsheet, people!) is a poor-man's relational database, with most spreadsheets having a single table, or multiple tables but modeling no relations. And you can't model relations in a spreadsheet in any meaningful way (imposing constraints, checking integrity, etc). Written from the perspective of someone who makes a living providing a SaaS for (among others) inventory control, for which a spreadsheet is a direct competitor. Also, from the perspective of someone who has seen a lot of customer spreadsheets with inventory, not one of them in any way correct or containing good data.
maxglute 1y ago
LLMs making Google Sheet webapps expediently is killer feature.
exodust 1y ago
> "I spent 2 months designing and making an admin panel " Why? It's easy and quick to code complicated things these days. It's nice having custom dashboards and functionality that fits exactly with what you need. Way more professional. I'm sure Google Sheets are fine. But I've been seen truly ugly Google Sheets with way too many tabs and horizontal scrolling. Clunky cells that seem to expand and have their own scrolling universe with different laws to everything else. Why can't I simply click the cell to copy it all, nope, let's try double-clicking the cell, I just want to grab the contents to the clipboard, nope. Now it expands and I'm scrolling the whole sheet and have lost my place because Google Sheets tries to snap to rows or something. Damn I hate this memory of navigating someone's horrible Google sheet.
supportengineer 1y ago
I sure hope the author also uses Google Takeout regularly.
psadri 1y ago
I often wished for a Google Sheets like service that had an easier to use API and a bit more control over the schema. A cross between sheets and a headless CMS.
mrbonner 1y ago
I used to work in a really big bank. One of our primary responsibility is to "convert" trade algorithm from spreadsheet to an actual production program/code. The usability of spreadsheet to show a concept quickly is great. But it is a nightmare to have to understand and debug during the conversion.
Zaheer 1y ago
Related: How Levels.fyi scaled to millions of users with Google Sheets as a backend https://www.levels.fyi/blog/scaling-to-millions-with-google-sheets.html https://www.levels.fyi/blog/scaling-to-millions-with-google-...
rcfox 1y ago
I worked on creating a card game with a couple of my friends. We kept all of the cards in a Google Sheet, allowing everyone to easily edit or create new cards. Then, I wrote a script to compile the sheet into a card atlas so that it could be consumed by Tabletop Simulator. It worked amazingly well. The only issue was that I had to run the script myself, since my friends were less technical. I'd probably see if I could setup a workflow in Github Actions to do it for me if I were to do this again.
entropyie 1y ago
For those who hated the unmaintainable mega spreadsheet of death, MS Access was actually a quite decent solution. It allowed you to sprinkle some structure and maintainability onto a spreadsheet without losing the accessibility and ease of development. You could whip up really functional UIs without much coding knowledge. 20 years later and I still don't know what the replacement for Access is in today's world...
- urbandw311er 1y ago
  Amen. IMHO the equivalent nowadays would be AirTable - big fan of this, especially now they’ve added Interfaces which is the equivalent of the MS Access UI layer.
zenlot 1y ago
I've recently removed the fancytooling out of my pipeline, and re-done Jira on LibreOffice's Calc. And with native python it has, I can query snapshots from Jira, add inputs etc. So much simpler, you open Calc's window and just hop faaaast through sheets. Rather than opening your browser, typing URL, entering Jira, getting into correct board etc. Need a to-do list? There too, just another sheet. Need to track your deployments? Just pull it into yet another sheet. The sheet is everything you really need.
rhinoceraptor 1y ago
The HN perennial video, "You Suck at Excel" by Joel Spolsky [1] really changed my view on spreadsheets. I had never bothered to learn them enough to utilize naming or any of the features that make spreadsheets much more comprehensible. I was very happy to see Google Sheets added named tables recently, too. I've recently been experimenting in Apps Script to write my own (physical) book collection record system with a USB barcode scanner. So far I have nothing polished enough to show, but it is a very cool platform. I found it a bit frustrating that I couldn't just import NPM packages, but at the same time it's a good excuse to embrace simplicity and skip a library like Axios, and rely on its built-in fetch()-like API. 1: The original YouTube video has since been taken down, but you can still view it through the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20161118170705/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c https://web.archive.org/web/20161118170705/https://www.youtu...
Tepix 1y ago
I like what the author is writing. For the listed use cases, grist might be the better tool. It would also return control over your data back to you if you self-hist it (which is easy).
system2 1y ago
>"I entered the workforce about 9 months ago" This sentence made me feel like I was reading a young Gen-Z kid's tech complaint at a small company.
submeta 1y ago
That’s what I thought almost thirty years ago: That MS Access is the solution to all problems in an office environment. I‘d model the domain and create a full working app with database backend in days. And five years later I consulted companies who had business critical solutions built in MS Access that were not scaling anymore (concurrent users, faster database etc) Applied to this article: Yes, you can use Google Sheets for all sorts of tasks, but eventually you will need to move on to a more robust solution.
Gud 1y ago
I work for an American mega corporation that you’ve definitely heard of - my department relies heavily on a couple of spread sheets. They have survived 3 times of corporate buy out of my factory. The spreadsheets looked dated when I started working here, 7 years ago. 2 years ago, my latest manager tried to move the department off these spread sheets to the corporation wide system. Another corporate wide system is set to replace the system we still aren’t using by the end of 2026. I suspect we’ll still rely on our spread sheets in 2027.
tqwhite 1y ago
using spreadsheet to prototype thing == good idea
busymom0 1y ago
I coach people for powerlifting and create their programs in Google Sheets. I even have functions setup for converting a given weight to their plate breakdowns (for example 455lb squat would be broken down as: bar, 4x45lb plates, 1x25lb plate). My athletes can enter their current one rep maxes and the sheet auto updates the numbers for each training session. They can record notes about how each set went, how many reps they got etc. and then I can review them. It's all super convenient.
LudwigNagasena 1y ago
One of the biggest problems in business automation is the gaps between such low-effort “shadow” IT, low code platforms, and fully fledged out “proper” projects. The gap between “let’s make a google form” and “let’s build a react app with proper design, ci/cd, testing, cdn and so on” is too wide. There should be a bunch of intermediate steps there with a sensible migration path, but there are none, there are only walled garden alternatives that aren’t compatible with either.
- FinnKuhn 1y ago
  I would argue the intermediate step are SAAS solutions such as ERP or CRM systems. Most of them offer sensible export options as well.
invisblecitizen 1y ago
This. I'm a huge fan sheets and built a bookmarking extension on it because it's free, portable, private, etc etc. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/quotebook/mcbjgbahgdnlcbohibbogajggabkleec https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/quotebook/mcbjgbahg...
guiomie 1y ago
My new discovered superpower for Google sheet is using Gemini, not the integrated functionality, but using Gemini to spit out some very specific use case into app script which I plug into my sheet. Majority of the time the code works without any issue on first try with Gemini Pro.
correct_horse 1y ago
for when not to use a spreadsheet, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34968457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34968457 tl;dr when it involves automated processes
jwithington 1y ago
I was the internal tools PM that looked at the portfolio of products and asked, "Why aren't all of these just Google Sheets?" Pivoted out of there lol
- justonceokay 1y ago
  It’s embarrassing. Back when Zillow was trying to be a real estate broker, they had a pipeline for salespeople to track the progress of flipped houses. I was brought in with oh maybe 50 other devs to code the more extensible replacement. The existing workflow was all down in google sheets, and it scaled to at least 10 states. There were growing pains, sure, but it seems like a monumental waste to spend an hundred years of dev effort replacing an existing working system that cost the price of a Google enterprise installation.
mglazebrook 1y ago
I get the appeal — Sheets is insanely flexible and quick to hack together workflows. I’ve seen entire businesses basically run on it. The tradeoff I’ve noticed is that as client work scales, you start spending more time managing the sheet than the actual work. Curious — do you use it mainly for tracking, or are you also handling things like scheduling/invoicing inside Sheets too? I’ve always wondered where the tipping point is between ‘this is efficient’ vs ‘this is duct tape holding everything together’
tnvmadhav 1y ago
use bash scripts unless it's absolutely neccessary to not.
wltr 1y ago
‘Why’ was apparently a too long of a word to include into the censored title.
classified 1y ago
I don't.
realaaa 1y ago
this is what got me excited about NOtion in the early days - they nailed that notion ( he he ) about just providing a nice view for databases, which you can design yourself and of course Google sheets with its synchronous use model is doing the same
timeflex 1y ago
Everyone wants something like a local version of Airtable, but the issue is anyone that tries immediately turns it into a cloud product. Nocodb is better, but is still severely restricted & tries to think too much in terms of replicating Excel functions, rather than making it easy to create your own using JS/TS.
bye_algebratraz 1y ago
For those who currently find themselves unable to use any spreadsheet because they are all based on algebraic notation, you might find the site below interesting. It's a spreadsheet for you that works with only arithmetic in two dimenstions. Be sure and try the first two short videos. You will never have seen anything like it. http://www.tmaker.site http://www.tmaker.site
drumdance 1y ago
My very first programming job was with Quattro Pro spreadsheet. It was a great introduction for someone who was self-taught and pre-internet.
break_the_bank 1y ago
This is a very interesting read, we are building Cursor for Google Sheets and the variance of use-cases we see is insane. 1. A lot of people are creating dashboards / CRMs - either they don't have any one selling them verticalized Software or its too expensive. 2. Some people have verticalized Software and they use Sheets so that they can share data with others without paying for per seat SaaS while not worrying about what the new members can read/write into 3. Lots of financial modeling and planning - From a chain of Cafe's in Laos, to Startups raising funding. 4. Lots of teachers trying to do scheduling for their school while ensuring that the teachers get enough of a break. We have seen this in Colombia, the US and Italy 5. A lot of market research and enrichment A Spreadsheet really is the IDE of a billion people. You can try us here https://tabtabtab.ai/ https://tabtabtab.ai/
caoxhua 1y ago
Excel/Spreadsheet are best invented software ever. However, the other side of this double-edge sword is its fragility, when data or logic grow in complexity, it raises more errors than it should. That's when a niche product gets its chance to chime in.

370 points by mugamuga 1y ago

I am amazed how many people just upload everything to Google without a second thought

And it all started with Visicalc. The spreadsheet and the word processor are the most important computer programs ever created. No wonder Google and Microsoft still make billions from these two.

salviati 1y ago
I would argue that the compiler is the most important computer program. Or maybe that it doesn't make that much sense to look for a most important program.
- failingforward 1y ago
  s/programs/applications/
SoftTalker 1y ago
Yep they were the original "killer apps" and still are. They are the reason that PCs gained traction in businesses in the 1980s. I helped my chemistry teacher in High School back then to use Visicalc on a TRS-80 as a gradebook. Almost anyone who has used a computer for work has used a spreadsheet for something, whether managing simple lists, or something much more complicated.

salviati 1y ago

Reminds me of "Ask HN: Is the world run by badly updated Excel sheets?" [0] You need experience to see the shorcomings of spreadsheets. No version control. No tests. In general it's good for things that don't need to evolve, but stay the same (most likely because they're short lived). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611431 [EDIT] An example of a comment from that thread pointing in this direction: > In general, you adapt to the excel owner's quirks, not vice versa. If you don't like it you should create an excel sheet of your own and copy/paste, which people also do. > I knew a project manager who's job seemed to be reconciling multiple versions of a spreadsheet with different authors.

PanoptesYC 1y ago
I've mostly seen the problem manifest when information is spread across a multitude of spreadsheets all stored in different places. The people involved don't know which spreadsheets contain what information and which are supposed to. Sometimes they end up having conflicting data purely because they don't realise that someone else thinks the primary source is spreadsheet A while they're only making changes to spreadsheet B. Any flaws with Excel haven't been due to the actual program or data, but just how the files are managed within projects. Labyrinthian sharepoints, files being forgotten about on network storage, etc.
- Qem 1y ago
  > Any flaws with Excel haven't been due to the actual program or data, but just how the files are managed within projects. Not sure of that. Examples: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167947308001606 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01679... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80
jeroenhd 1y ago
> No version control You can use version control with Excel spreadsheets, though it's not very good. It's called "track changes" and even has a limited capacity to approve/reject changes from other people. Very few people uses that feature, especially not the people who have built a Rube Goldberg machine to run their business processes, but you could do it if you wanted to.
- bluGill 1y ago
  The people who have "built a Rube Goldberg machine to run their business processes" should have used a database not a spreadsheet. Though they likely don't have enough training in database design and so if they had their result would be worse - but that is the fault of their lack of training. To be fair, database training is not something they should have in their position

adrianbooth17 1y ago

I use Google Sheets for all my finances, it's great. I have an Expense Tracker UI within Google Sheets that allows me to submit expenses to the main sheet (currently just over 5000 rows of expenses over the last few years) I only just recently vibe coded a web UI tool that uses a Google Service Account to add expenses to this Google Sheet for me, and then created a Progressive Web App from that so I could do everything on my phone. In summary, Google Sheets is sometimes all you need instead of a database for very simple applications (and built for an audience of one)

bdcravens 1y ago
I've done the same for a long time. I've tried so many purpose-built alternatives, and always come back to my solution. (Funny enough, Microsoft Money from 20+ years ago is closer to what I'd like than anything available today) Not to say there aren't features I wish I could easily have. I could of course build it, and I've "started" so many times, but after a few hours of the typical boilerplate code you have to deal with, I'd always give up and go back to my surefire solution. (This was before vibe coding, so I may take a stab at that)

benterix 1y ago

2000's: I use Excel for everything 2010's: I use Google Sheets for everything 2020's: I use Etherpad[0] for everything [0] Or any other alternative for that matter

brazukadev 1y ago
Real 2020's: I use TikTok/Instagram/YouTube for everything
- mixcocam 1y ago
  +1
- lomase 1y ago
  I use LLMs for everything.

dvh 1y ago

I haven't used Google sheets for maybe 2 years, didn't have the need, but week ago I needed to send customer a table that will be updated every couple of days. I was surprised how slow it is. Table has 40 lines and 8 columns, static text only, and it takes 12s until I can edit it. For what it is (adding sentence every 3 day) it's ok but if I had to actually use it for myself on a daily basis it would drive me mad.

_zoltan_ 1y ago
I use it daily and have never had this problem.
maccard 1y ago
I run my household budgetting off google sheets - a clean load of 8 sheets, wth 20-200 rows and 20-50 columns including some simple cross-sheet formulas is fully loaded and interactive in less than 2 seconds. My work's sharepoint based Excel roadmap doc is 40 rows of 8 columns and takes about 15 seconds from clicking the link to actually being readable, for comparison.
crazygringo 1y ago
It should be lightning fast for what you're describing. All I can guess is you have some browser extension interfering? Maybe one that is blocking certain calls Google uses and the sheet doesn't load until they time out? If you're running an adblocker or blocking trackers or anything like that, try disabling those to see if that makes a difference. Otherwise check the network tab of the dev console to see what seems to be slow.
bdcravens 1y ago
Definitely something more going on, like some deeply nested functions.
jeffbee 1y ago
I manage all the information for every parcel in my city in Google Sheets. It is > 29k rows x dozens of columns and it is instantly interactive when I visit the bookmarked URL.

greymalik 1y ago

It’s amazing to me how well Fred Brooks’ insights from 50 years ago hold up (plan to throw one away, in this case).

cjs_ac 1y ago

> To cut things short, always use the easiest solution to solve a particular problem and once that solution does not work for the business anymore reassess what the new requirements are and either try enhance the current solution or find an alternative that better solve the problem. When solving a problem, solve the problem you have, not the problem you think you might have in the future, or the problem you wish you had. Your solution will prove inadequate in the future, but you are unlikely to correctly predict in what way your solution will be inadequate.

f1shy 1y ago
But: if it is not more work, you can solve your problem by solving a family of problems around your problem in the problem space, making the solution robust, as small changes in the problem definition can easily be catached by small changes in your solution. That should, with no extra work, solve future problems.
- nashashmi 1y ago
  I think you are saying you should be structured well enough to change your system to solve future problems. Like do you really need a dashboard on day 1? Or reports on day 2? Sometimes you just need a log of data. And the columns can grow and shrink.
chii 1y ago
> you are unlikely to correctly predict in what way your solution will be inadequate but you can choose a current solution that does not block nor inhibit a future solution. As they say, always keep your options open, and don't vendor lock-in yourself into a corner.
t_mann 1y ago
> Your solution will prove inadequate in the future, but you are unlikely to correctly predict in what way your solution will be inadequate. One inadequacy could be complete dependency on a vendor who accidentally locks you out of all your services or starts scalping you with ever higher fees. That one is quite predictable here.

paseante 1y ago

Well, did you suggest it to your boss? how did it go? bad organization is a two way resposability, except in the army.

mft_ 1y ago

I've long argued that spreadsheets are essentially a structured programming tool for people that would never imagine they could or would program. And maybe even a gateway drug in a proportion of cases?

ikaros02 1y ago
Mary Shaw discusses spreadsheets as an example of vernacular programming in a paper I read: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3480947 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3480947
- smj-edison 1y ago
  Huh, this is a really fascinating article! I really like how she articulates common myths in software development. However, it feels like her remarks are more targeted at the academic CS community, because I think a lot of her critiques (such as lack of integration thinking) are already internalized by project leads of modern software systems.
saulpw 1y ago
The problem is that spreadsheets are an unstructured programming tool. It's like BASIC with all its GOTOs, index-only loops, etc vs C with proper functions and control structures. You can have a structured spreadsheet but it requires discipline that almost no person (and certainly no organization) has.

EverydayBalloon 1y ago

[dead]

TrackerFF 1y ago

One thing I've learned: Never (ever) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I still do not understand, and it was one of the most frustrating "customer support" processes I've ever experienced, and it took years.

PunchTornado 1y ago
try being banned by msft. I am still banned for 6 years without doing anything wrong. still lost access to all of my accounts.
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  My dad got a Trojan and they took over his msft account to buy some Xbox cards. They banned him as well but he took them to small claims in the EU. As usual they didn't show up and he got a ruling to reinstate his account. Was under 100 bucks and he got his account back. If the account is really important I would do the same. There is a 90% chance they won't show.
  - fsckboy 1y ago
    just as a point of interest, in US small claims courts, the judge can award monetary damages, but cannot order somebody to do something (like turn your account on) i'm not sure if this varies by state.
- AJ007 1y ago
  A good reason why no one should ever have their Windows install linked to a Microsoft account, same for MacOS.
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    Who ever lost apple account by being banned? with no recourse? I don't remember a story like that

brap 1y ago

Absolutely agree with OP. One thing I would add is, sometimes when you need some extra complexity that's too difficult to express or build in Google Sheets, one step above it is Google Colab (or any other Jupyter notebook). Before building a full blown app, I always ask myself: 1. can this just be a spreadsheet? If not, 2. can this just be a Jupyter notebook? And yes, the integration between Sheets and Colab is great.

vlucas 1y ago
Or Google Apps Script! You can get a long way with some simple scripts to import data, etc.
cracki 1y ago
how do you upgrade some existing "thing" from a google sheet to a colab notebook? I know of the gspread package for python... but I can't see how that gives you anything but the raw data from the sheet. any graphs and interaction (!) and such you would have to redo in jupyter.
asdff 1y ago
IMO Jupyter notebook is a big step up in complexity from just writing a python script. You can put block comments in python script just fine. "let me spin up a local web server to view my comments and run my code in serial in an object oriented fashion" no thanks from me.

mixcocam 1y ago

"Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%." - Donald Knuth Start with a gsheet, when it breaks build something else.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
Anecdotal, my previous employer had a contract once for a gas storage / exchange, for years their whole business relied on an Excel sheet (basically tracking gas storage transactions from various customers). I don't remember why but they decided to migrate that to a proper application, I think it took a full development team two years to build in all. But it's likely that, as these things go, they added much more features and visualizations on top instead of just a like-for-like replacement. TL;DR that company was bootstrapped successfully on just a spreadsheet.
- mixcocam 1y ago
  Agreed. That is my point. If that company had built the app from the start it would have died building it.
Pooge 1y ago
> Start with a gsheet, when it breaks build something else. Absolutely don't. The one who built the spreadsheet will have changed companies and the "business logic" and the knowledge will be gone with them. You're now stuck with a blackbox that no ones knows the specs of but everybody depends on.
- wewtyflakes 1y ago
  How is that different than an engineer building out a service implementing material business logic then leaving for another job?

codeulike 1y ago

I can't find who coined it but there's a saying along the lines of "a spreadsheet is the second best tool for any job"

cainxinth 1y ago

See also: Do the simplest thing that could possibly work https://www.seangoedecke.com/the-simplest-thing-that-could-possibly-work/ https://www.seangoedecke.com/the-simplest-thing-that-could-p...

rsynnott 1y ago

I note that this blog isn't a Google Sheet.

bdcravens 1y ago
You're right, though it definitely fits into the ethos of don't overcomplicate things. https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/ https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/

douchescript 1y ago

Works as long as you don’t have to ask ”which Google sheet” if you just have one sheet for a particular problem you are not in a world of hurt.

nashashmi 1y ago

This is what we did in Excel. Is Google Sheet better somehow? Or is that only what new age kids know since college has adopted google products?

johannes1234321 1y ago
It is "better" in the way that it is easier to share. Sharing Excel sheets and keeping them in sync is tedious. (Even with O365/OneDrive) This may also include sharing between your own devices.
Loughla 1y ago
I love excel and use it daily in my bullshit admin job. But google sheets is so much easier if you have more than one person interacting with the data. It just works, easily, every time. Even with 365 or whatever for MS products, they're more cumbersome.
bdcravens 1y ago
48 years old, so definitely not a "new age kid" Sharing is the killer feature. Not that you can't share with Office 360 these days, but many of us were sharing Google Sheets years ago when the rest of the world was still sending Excel files as email attachments, and there hasn't been much reason to switch. Probably not used by many, but if you need to break out of basic functions, some may find working in Javascript preferable to VBA.

hn-ifs 1y ago

I suppose the issue here is trusting Google with your personal and business data. Mining that information for targeting advertising aside, it's not unheard of Google locking people out of their accounts with no reasons or obvious recourse. I wonder what the best non-mega corp solution there is for this.

Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
Cryptpad comes to my mind although I suppose it might lack some features of google sheets but it has a web interface. For a non web interface, things like libreoffice can be good too but I think that you are asking for a web version.. I am not sure if libreoffice has a web version, it seems that they do but I can't find much information and I might recommend crytpad personally so.

jmkd 1y ago

Xoogler here. For my five years we only used Sheets (called Trix internally) for everything from project management, CRM, quarterly planning, reporting, interviewing, finances and so on. This was not because it was a Google product (we used plenty of competitors' products) but because it is so easy to make them good enough for the task that you can move on to getting the job done instead of administrating getting the job done.

mixcocam 1y ago
I have heard that at google collaboration happens with: - making lists (google groups) - gsheets - basic real time chat with auto disappear Is that the case? I find that super interesting. No sexy Slack or Teams type of thing?
- jmkd 1y ago
  That was the case from 2011-2016. I can't say with as much certainty now, but anecdotally, probably similar.
- B-Con 1y ago
  Chat supports rooms with chat threads without autodisappear. Everyone is in various rooms for their local team, broader team, org, and cross functional stuff. The net effect is Slack-like. There's also the ticket system. Sheets are commonly used by various PMs and TPMs for high level tracking, but IC eng stick with the tickets. It works fine.
skirmish 1y ago
I can say that even now lots of machine learning datasets are kept as rows in gSheets and processed by Python running in Colab. In our team, all our evaluations: read input data from gSheet, run model inference, store outputs in gSheet for manual review if needed, process outputs to compute metrics and plot graphs in Colab. It is great because evaluation logic frequently changes, and without Colab you would sit and wait days each time for code reviews and stupid readability approvals. And then, of course, if you want reproducibility, you just check in Colab notebooks into the source control.

niam 1y ago

I'll die on this hill. Google Sheets was phenomenal for prototyping apps and getting quick feedback from users back when I used it in 2015-2020. Back then they had this janky implementation of Mozilla Rhino underpinning their "Apps Script" engine and it still beat the pants off of anything else you could use for free. Certainly you can shoot your feet with the various spreadsheet-isms but if you're diligent about keeping raw data pure (preferably in a completely different sheet inaccessible to users) it does a bangup job of quickly shoving a UI in front of users and letting them realize what they want and iterate on it before calcifying it into a more rigid system.

ebbi 1y ago
Exactly this. Worked for a startup that had dogmatic leaders on 'using the best tool' 'spreadsheets are bad' (a trope they just got from people, not having used it themselves). Ended up spending thousands on consultants to build reporting etc that ended up needing to be changed after 6 months because of business/personnel changes. Spreadsheets are the best tool to quickly spin up and make changes to data. I've always thought about a tool to make a 'front-end' version of spreadsheets that end users use, where the layout can be a bit more freeform (i.e. build reports and dashboards in spreadsheet, then 'select' these reports and paste them into a front end WYSIWYG tool).
- urbandw311er 1y ago
  Check out AirTable it’s exactly this. (Have mentioned it on two comments now, but I’m not affiliated with the company just a big fan)

corry 1y ago

Always overlooked point in these pro/anti-spreadsheet discussions: A spreadsheet gives you a DB, a quickly and easily customized UI, and iterative / easy-to-debug data processing all in a package that everyone in the working world already understands. AND with a freedom that allows the creator to do it however they want. AND it's fairly portable. You can build incredible things in spreadsheets. I remain convinced that it's the most creative and powerful piece of software we have available, especially so for people who can't code. With that power and freedom comes downsides, sure; and we can debate the merits of it being online, or whether this or that vendor is preferable; but my deep appreciation for spreadsheets remains undiminished by these mere trifles. It's the best authoring tool we've ever devised. EDIT TO ADD: the only other thing that seems to 'rhyme' with spreadsheets in the same way is: HyperCard. Flexible workbench that let you stitch together applications, data, UX, etc. RIP HyperCard, may you be never forgotten.

bluGill 1y ago
I wish there was a better way to make spreadsheets use a database as a backend. Most of what people do with a spreadsheet would be better done in a database - but a database needs a lot more training to use (if you don't have the training you will make something worse than spreadsheet with your database!)
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Wasn't Microsoft Access basically that? There's also Google's AppSheet, which may be that too.
  - yomismoaqui 1y ago
    Microsoft Access requires more training (tables, foreign keys...) and from experience most of the people using Excel managed to bend it to do what they wanted. The maintainability of the resulting systems was not great, but they did the job and worse is better I guess..
    - 1y ago

cloudking 1y ago

Built entire businesses on Google Sheets and Apps Script. Powerful combo.

sixhobbits 1y ago

Same, I currently have - My own rough business accounting (download all bank statements and do some pivots and graphing. Real accountants do the real thing, but I like to have a version that makes sense to me and that is up to date) - Personal accounting finance tracking for sharing expenses and tracking living costs over time - Consolidated asset tracking across different projects/accounts etc, just a quick summary that's not perfect but spending 10 minutes a month manually updating it helps keep it in my head too. - A lot of project management (we also have real PM tools, but I keep my own sheets because it's easy and it makes sense to me) - A bunch of quick analytics (I also use metabase, but sometimes it's just faster to create a graph in sheets) Most of the time the sheet is not the _main_ tool I use, but it is the easiest and most useful one, while the others have better integrations, safety mechanisms (I often end up with +500 or whatever in a copy-paste formula error and sometimes don't catch it), and collaborative measures (if you have 2+ people editing the same sheet you're usually going to have a bad time)

caoxhua 1y ago
Have you heard of Fina Money? SpreadSheet works, but Fina tries to make it easier to analyze and visualize your finance data from sheets + live banks. It solves the problems you mentioned.

ksec 1y ago

Slightly Off Topic, are there any other online SpreadSheets other than Excel 365 and Google Sheets? Some of them are AirTable like which is CRM focus, but I just want a really simple spreadsheet that is easily accessible and not from Big Tech.

actuallyalys 1y ago
I’ve mostly used LibreOffice for personal use and other cases where I don’t want to use Big Tech, but you could try OnlyOffice. I’ve also been interested in Grist, which is more like AirTable but programmed in Python and (relevant to your request) self-hostable. Edit: Depending on your reasons for avoiding big tech, you may want to research the owner of Only Office, which was a Russian company but apparently isn’t anymore? You might want to also try CryptPad, which is based off of OnlyOffice and recommended elsewhere in the comments (which reminded me).
- zenmac 1y ago
  What's cool about CryptPad is all the data is encrypted behind the # tag key which never gets sent to server. So even the server admin don't have access to the user docs. It has being easy to migrate from server to server. A truly shining example to google doc alternative. It would be great to have some kind of syncthing <-> cryptpad drive, then it can be very nice alternative to even dropbox. Not sure what the development is ATM.
criddell 1y ago
The web version of Apple Numbers is pretty good although I suppose it doesn't meet your non-big-tech criteria.
- ksec 1y ago
  I actually dont have big tech problem, it is just most of the well knowns once are blocked in where I work, and now even Notion is blocked.
blitt 1y ago

clamorbeclam 1y ago

Funny, I recently departed from the google ecosystem to proton, self hosted nextcloud, kagi, Libreoffice, and Apple Maps. Am I giving up some ease of use? Absolutely! Can I live with it? Absolutely! Can google go fuck itself? Hell yea. Libre office is like missing a limb, but with practice it can do anything I want it to.

warkdarrior 1y ago
You have self-hosted Kagi? How?
SoftTalker 1y ago
Google, Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice, close enough as makes no difference for what the vast majority of people do with spreadsheets. And even for more complex use cases, any of them will most likely be fine. Google probably has the edge if you need real-time sharing with multiple people.

piqufoh 1y ago

> Doing the smallest and easiest solution to a problem as a way to get to know the full scope and then iterating after that if needs be is by far the best solution (for me). 100% -- this is YAGNI (or you-aint-gonna-need-it) and should be among the first things you think about when starting a new project.

kkukshtel 1y ago

This reminds me of this idea of "Minium Viable Airtable" that I think is apt: https://sirupsen.com/minimum-viable-airtable https://sirupsen.com/minimum-viable-airtable

sodapopcan 1y ago

You shouldn't use anything by Google.

patrickscoleman 1y ago

Only tangentially on-topic, but I do all the financial modeling for the past several (early stage) startups I've worked for in Google Sheets. The ease, collaboration/sharing, and array formulas win out over the faster speed for calculations, better shortcuts, cross-workbook linking, and customization in Excel. That said, it's been a few years since I've tried Excel so would love to hear someone convince me to try it again.

oaktowner 1y ago
I'm using the MS suite for the first time in over a decade...and the collaborative aspects are still nowhere near Google's. I routinely get problems when multiple people are editing the same content (Word doc, spreadsheet, or PowerPoint). And sometimes the thick client works best, sometimes browser editing works fine...but it's inconsistent. For all of them, Microsoft has a more complete feature set...but for 99% of things (and anything with lots of collaboration), I prefer Google Work Suite or whatever it's called this month.

Mistletoe 1y ago

I’m about to leave Google Sheets because I keep very long spreadsheets about my life and everything I do and it refuses to open at anything but right at the top. So every time I have to scroll and scroll to get to the bottom. Does anyone have a fix for this? Last time I googled all I found was some dingleberry on a Google thread saying that’s how spreadsheets should open. I moved to Google Sheets from Excel online that did that right at least. I moved away from Excel online because it has requirements for small file sizes and the images I would paste in the spreadsheet filled them up to the limit too fast.

criddell 1y ago
Doesn't ctrl-end jump to the bottom row of the spreadsheet? Ctrl-down arrow will jump to the last cell in the current column. On a Mac it's cmd rather than ctrl I believe.

Lumoscore 1y ago

I feel this deeply. I only use Google Sheets, too. It sounds crazy, but it’s the best tool for so many random things, and here’s why I stick with it: It Just Works: There's zero fuss. I don't need to install anything, I don't need to save it, and I don't need to worry about the format. It's always there, and it saves automatically. It's Simple to Share: If I need to show something to my spouse, a coworker, or anyone, I just send a link. No one needs to sign up or download some special app. Everyone can open it right away. It's the Perfect Checklist: For managing my own stuff—like a budget, a travel plan, or even just tracking a personal project—a sheet is faster than any fancy app. I can make columns that say "Done," "To Do," or "Waiting," and that's all I need. For most of my personal data and quick shared work, trying to use a dedicated software package is just overkill. Sheets is the easiest way to organize information in a clear, digital table. It's the ultimate low-tech solution to high-tech problems.

aitchnyu 1y ago

Does Google Sheet allow fine grained filtering like "allow customers to see only their own requests" or "allow submissions to be edited within 1 hour"?

mikevm 1y ago

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deleted 1y ago

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kramer2718 1y ago

2015: This meeting could have been an email 2025: This enterprise development project could have been a spreadsheet

sneak 1y ago

Reminder that anything you put into Google for storage is you voluntarily disclosing such information to the United States federal government without a warrant requirement. Due to both the third party doctrine as well as FAA702, the feds do not require warrants to access, copy, process, and store indefinitely all information you provide to Google. Good luck!

dcminter 1y ago

> I entered the workforce about 9 months ago Right or wrong, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to put forth such a definite opinion after less than a year in the workforce. What OP probably misses is the "there ain't nothing so permanent as a temporary solution" thing. I too embrace quick and dirty solutions but only if I have total control over the lifetime of that solution. If someone's going to ask me to deliver it immediately and then build a castle on top of it... I might insist on using a tool that has more up front cost.

michaelteter 1y ago
I particularly enjoyed the “every couple of months…” bit. So, about four times?
- dcminter 1y ago
  'zactly :D I don't want to be too harsh though; I definitely think the attitude of rolling out something simple that works is a solid approach when compared with the gold-plated second-system-syndrome thinking that's terribly easy to fall into. They're not wrong wrong, but there's a bit more nuance to be had once you've seen the monsters that can grown out of a hasty prototype.
kelnos 1y ago
Yeah, that line made me nearly laugh out loud. Not saying the author isn't onto something: using the simplest tool that will get your job done -- and bonus points if you can reasonably use the same tool for several things -- is a decent principle to live by. Using an existing tool is great, when it meets your needs without too many difficult trade offs. And where they work, it seems like business requirements are scrapped and rewritten every couple months, so the whole "temporary-haha-yeah-right solution" problem doesn't really rear its head. The rest of us have to deal with the difficult mess several years down the line, because "we'll throw it away and write a new thing once we need to scale" is something that very rarely actually happens. Of course, the author has no experience of a year down the line, let alone several years down the line.

bryanhogan 1y ago

This is honestly one of the things I really like about Notion Databases, at the core they are an online collaborative spreadsheet. But then it can also be given multiple views and different forms such as a calendar, Kanban board, timeline, image gallery, etc., wish more apps would allow something like this, e.g. Obsidian Bases are a great first step.

EGreg 1y ago

Why not use an open source spreadsheet in javascript and html that you can host yourself? You can whip up whatever you want now with an LLM. And with JS it will save whatever you want in indexeddb or pouchdb and export to whatever formats like csv. Why lock into google?

jwr 1y ago

The world is not binary, nor black & white. There is an entire spectrum of solutions between a spreadsheet and a highly-structured app. Sure, you can use a spreadsheet for anything, it's quick, and provides nearly no structure. You can also use a specialized application, tailored for the particular processes at hand, that does error checking on input, validates data integrity, and does not let you break data structures. And there is a whole spectrum in between. One thing to note is that a spreadsheet (OPs insistence on calling it "Google Sheet" is amusing after years of hearing people call it "excel", it's a spreadsheet, people!) is a poor-man's relational database, with most spreadsheets having a single table, or multiple tables but modeling no relations. And you can't model relations in a spreadsheet in any meaningful way (imposing constraints, checking integrity, etc). Written from the perspective of someone who makes a living providing a SaaS for (among others) inventory control, for which a spreadsheet is a direct competitor. Also, from the perspective of someone who has seen a lot of customer spreadsheets with inventory, not one of them in any way correct or containing good data.

maxglute 1y ago

LLMs making Google Sheet webapps expediently is killer feature.

exodust 1y ago

> "I spent 2 months designing and making an admin panel " Why? It's easy and quick to code complicated things these days. It's nice having custom dashboards and functionality that fits exactly with what you need. Way more professional. I'm sure Google Sheets are fine. But I've been seen truly ugly Google Sheets with way too many tabs and horizontal scrolling. Clunky cells that seem to expand and have their own scrolling universe with different laws to everything else. Why can't I simply click the cell to copy it all, nope, let's try double-clicking the cell, I just want to grab the contents to the clipboard, nope. Now it expands and I'm scrolling the whole sheet and have lost my place because Google Sheets tries to snap to rows or something. Damn I hate this memory of navigating someone's horrible Google sheet.

supportengineer 1y ago

I sure hope the author also uses Google Takeout regularly.

psadri 1y ago

I often wished for a Google Sheets like service that had an easier to use API and a bit more control over the schema. A cross between sheets and a headless CMS.

mrbonner 1y ago

I used to work in a really big bank. One of our primary responsibility is to "convert" trade algorithm from spreadsheet to an actual production program/code. The usability of spreadsheet to show a concept quickly is great. But it is a nightmare to have to understand and debug during the conversion.

Zaheer 1y ago

Related: How Levels.fyi scaled to millions of users with Google Sheets as a backend https://www.levels.fyi/blog/scaling-to-millions-with-google-sheets.html https://www.levels.fyi/blog/scaling-to-millions-with-google-...

rcfox 1y ago

I worked on creating a card game with a couple of my friends. We kept all of the cards in a Google Sheet, allowing everyone to easily edit or create new cards. Then, I wrote a script to compile the sheet into a card atlas so that it could be consumed by Tabletop Simulator. It worked amazingly well. The only issue was that I had to run the script myself, since my friends were less technical. I'd probably see if I could setup a workflow in Github Actions to do it for me if I were to do this again.

entropyie 1y ago

For those who hated the unmaintainable mega spreadsheet of death, MS Access was actually a quite decent solution. It allowed you to sprinkle some structure and maintainability onto a spreadsheet without losing the accessibility and ease of development. You could whip up really functional UIs without much coding knowledge. 20 years later and I still don't know what the replacement for Access is in today's world...

urbandw311er 1y ago
Amen. IMHO the equivalent nowadays would be AirTable - big fan of this, especially now they’ve added Interfaces which is the equivalent of the MS Access UI layer.

zenlot 1y ago

I've recently removed the fancytooling out of my pipeline, and re-done Jira on LibreOffice's Calc. And with native python it has, I can query snapshots from Jira, add inputs etc. So much simpler, you open Calc's window and just hop faaaast through sheets. Rather than opening your browser, typing URL, entering Jira, getting into correct board etc. Need a to-do list? There too, just another sheet. Need to track your deployments? Just pull it into yet another sheet. The sheet is everything you really need.

rhinoceraptor 1y ago

The HN perennial video, "You Suck at Excel" by Joel Spolsky [1] really changed my view on spreadsheets. I had never bothered to learn them enough to utilize naming or any of the features that make spreadsheets much more comprehensible. I was very happy to see Google Sheets added named tables recently, too. I've recently been experimenting in Apps Script to write my own (physical) book collection record system with a USB barcode scanner. So far I have nothing polished enough to show, but it is a very cool platform. I found it a bit frustrating that I couldn't just import NPM packages, but at the same time it's a good excuse to embrace simplicity and skip a library like Axios, and rely on its built-in fetch()-like API. 1: The original YouTube video has since been taken down, but you can still view it through the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20161118170705/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c https://web.archive.org/web/20161118170705/https://www.youtu...

Tepix 1y ago

I like what the author is writing. For the listed use cases, grist might be the better tool. It would also return control over your data back to you if you self-hist it (which is easy).

system2 1y ago

>"I entered the workforce about 9 months ago" This sentence made me feel like I was reading a young Gen-Z kid's tech complaint at a small company.

submeta 1y ago

That’s what I thought almost thirty years ago: That MS Access is the solution to all problems in an office environment. I‘d model the domain and create a full working app with database backend in days. And five years later I consulted companies who had business critical solutions built in MS Access that were not scaling anymore (concurrent users, faster database etc) Applied to this article: Yes, you can use Google Sheets for all sorts of tasks, but eventually you will need to move on to a more robust solution.

Gud 1y ago

I work for an American mega corporation that you’ve definitely heard of - my department relies heavily on a couple of spread sheets. They have survived 3 times of corporate buy out of my factory. The spreadsheets looked dated when I started working here, 7 years ago. 2 years ago, my latest manager tried to move the department off these spread sheets to the corporation wide system. Another corporate wide system is set to replace the system we still aren’t using by the end of 2026. I suspect we’ll still rely on our spread sheets in 2027.

tqwhite 1y ago

using spreadsheet to prototype thing == good idea

busymom0 1y ago

I coach people for powerlifting and create their programs in Google Sheets. I even have functions setup for converting a given weight to their plate breakdowns (for example 455lb squat would be broken down as: bar, 4x45lb plates, 1x25lb plate). My athletes can enter their current one rep maxes and the sheet auto updates the numbers for each training session. They can record notes about how each set went, how many reps they got etc. and then I can review them. It's all super convenient.

LudwigNagasena 1y ago

One of the biggest problems in business automation is the gaps between such low-effort “shadow” IT, low code platforms, and fully fledged out “proper” projects. The gap between “let’s make a google form” and “let’s build a react app with proper design, ci/cd, testing, cdn and so on” is too wide. There should be a bunch of intermediate steps there with a sensible migration path, but there are none, there are only walled garden alternatives that aren’t compatible with either.

FinnKuhn 1y ago
I would argue the intermediate step are SAAS solutions such as ERP or CRM systems. Most of them offer sensible export options as well.

invisblecitizen 1y ago

This. I'm a huge fan sheets and built a bookmarking extension on it because it's free, portable, private, etc etc. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/quotebook/mcbjgbahgdnlcbohibbogajggabkleec https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/quotebook/mcbjgbahg...

guiomie 1y ago

My new discovered superpower for Google sheet is using Gemini, not the integrated functionality, but using Gemini to spit out some very specific use case into app script which I plug into my sheet. Majority of the time the code works without any issue on first try with Gemini Pro.

correct_horse 1y ago

for when not to use a spreadsheet, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34968457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34968457 tl;dr when it involves automated processes

jwithington 1y ago

I was the internal tools PM that looked at the portfolio of products and asked, "Why aren't all of these just Google Sheets?" Pivoted out of there lol

justonceokay 1y ago
It’s embarrassing. Back when Zillow was trying to be a real estate broker, they had a pipeline for salespeople to track the progress of flipped houses. I was brought in with oh maybe 50 other devs to code the more extensible replacement. The existing workflow was all down in google sheets, and it scaled to at least 10 states. There were growing pains, sure, but it seems like a monumental waste to spend an hundred years of dev effort replacing an existing working system that cost the price of a Google enterprise installation.

mglazebrook 1y ago

I get the appeal — Sheets is insanely flexible and quick to hack together workflows. I’ve seen entire businesses basically run on it. The tradeoff I’ve noticed is that as client work scales, you start spending more time managing the sheet than the actual work. Curious — do you use it mainly for tracking, or are you also handling things like scheduling/invoicing inside Sheets too? I’ve always wondered where the tipping point is between ‘this is efficient’ vs ‘this is duct tape holding everything together’

tnvmadhav 1y ago

use bash scripts unless it's absolutely neccessary to not.

wltr 1y ago

‘Why’ was apparently a too long of a word to include into the censored title.

classified 1y ago

I don't.

realaaa 1y ago

this is what got me excited about NOtion in the early days - they nailed that notion ( he he ) about just providing a nice view for databases, which you can design yourself and of course Google sheets with its synchronous use model is doing the same

timeflex 1y ago

Everyone wants something like a local version of Airtable, but the issue is anyone that tries immediately turns it into a cloud product. Nocodb is better, but is still severely restricted & tries to think too much in terms of replicating Excel functions, rather than making it easy to create your own using JS/TS.

bye_algebratraz 1y ago

For those who currently find themselves unable to use any spreadsheet because they are all based on algebraic notation, you might find the site below interesting. It's a spreadsheet for you that works with only arithmetic in two dimenstions. Be sure and try the first two short videos. You will never have seen anything like it. http://www.tmaker.site http://www.tmaker.site

drumdance 1y ago

My very first programming job was with Quattro Pro spreadsheet. It was a great introduction for someone who was self-taught and pre-internet.

break_the_bank 1y ago

This is a very interesting read, we are building Cursor for Google Sheets and the variance of use-cases we see is insane. 1. A lot of people are creating dashboards / CRMs - either they don't have any one selling them verticalized Software or its too expensive. 2. Some people have verticalized Software and they use Sheets so that they can share data with others without paying for per seat SaaS while not worrying about what the new members can read/write into 3. Lots of financial modeling and planning - From a chain of Cafe's in Laos, to Startups raising funding. 4. Lots of teachers trying to do scheduling for their school while ensuring that the teachers get enough of a break. We have seen this in Colombia, the US and Italy 5. A lot of market research and enrichment A Spreadsheet really is the IDE of a billion people. You can try us here https://tabtabtab.ai/ https://tabtabtab.ai/

caoxhua 1y ago

Excel/Spreadsheet are best invented software ever. However, the other side of this double-edge sword is its fragility, when data or logic grow in complexity, it raises more errors than it should. That's when a niche product gets its chance to chime in.