pete_nic

8 ms·

1.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Can it calculate words per minute too? That would be helpful.
2.
by pete_nic 4y ago
> Imagine building an entire business that ceases to be profitable as soon as you can't spy on users. >I wish we could do the same thing to Google. You’re assuming Google’s core business would not exist without spying on users an
3.
by pete_nic 4y ago
VisiCalc was conceived in 1978, before the internet and all the data that comes with it. Excel has had to catch up with these developments and is finally doing a good job with it.
4.
by pete_nic 4y ago
This is a great idea but the list seems incomplete. For example, where are the email marketing tools? Mailchimp / Intuit, Convetkit, SendFox, and so many more. There are many other markets / verticals not covered here.
5.
by pete_nic 4y ago
In this context I’m interpreting DSL to mean “domain-specific language”
6.
by pete_nic 4y ago
> Excel may be the most influential software ever built. I believe this to be true in business. Other tech may be more widely used eg “email” but the software is created by a variety of different companies (Google, Microsoft).
7.
by pete_nic 4y ago
I signed up for a Codeblog! The Captcha making me pick photos of traffic lights and cross walks to verify my humanity feels like the antithesis of what this article and product is trying to do.
8.
by pete_nic 4y ago
One use case where this does not work: when attempting to learn if someone understood you properly. I find myself asking short, direct questions, often in a managerial capacity, to confirm that other people have the correct understanding. M
9.
by pete_nic 4y ago
I feel like a more appropriate name would be “write first, then build”. “Documentation” reminds the product managers and engineers of corporate-y documents like release notes. The “documentation” described is more of a fluid collection of i
10.
by pete_nic 4y ago
>Opening in 2022, our state-of-the-art Texas manufacturing site will manufacture products to address drug shortages and price gouging [1] Their website says they will start manufacturing drugs this year [1] https://www.markcub
11.
by pete_nic 4y ago
>If you won’t or can’t talk to customers then at least make the thing simple. The simpler something is, the more people will use it. Great advice
12.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Good point, I’m sure more exist today and will be created in the future.
13.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Google is a large, horizontal platform. My intuition is the next Google killers will be specific to verticals, health comes up on HN a lot. All that to say, if I were yep I would focus on search that avoids big, corporate, SEO stuff and con
14.
by pete_nic 4y ago
> We believe the best way to protect user data is to not have it in the first place I like the exchange of value that comes from paying money for a service. With free products from companies like Google you do not pay for the service and
15.
by pete_nic 4y ago
> Excel is cheap and and you can find it everywhere.
16.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Thank you, very helpful answer. I was not trying to be antagonistic, I had never heard a critique of calendly and wanted to understand how an open source project would improve the situation. I agree, very important to understand how your d
17.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Why does this problem warrant an open source alternative? What are the downfalls with Calendly being “closed” that this aims to solve?
18.
by pete_nic 4y ago
What is your methodology to collect the tech stack data? Some things seem easy to identify, eg Google Analytics, and others much harder, eg back office like Microsoft Excel.
19.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Spreadsheets are one of the most ubiquitous business tools in the world. Similar to email, another ubiquitous business tool, there are good uses and bad uses of the tool. Users need to know when to use them, when to not use them, and when t
20.
by pete_nic 4y ago
In reading this article on finance my mind drifts to the refrain on HN that search (Google) is broken and ready to be disrupted. Can consensus mechanisms on distributed systems help create a less spammy, more equitable search engine? > a
21.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Contextual advertising https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/contextual-advertising....
22.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Do you believe privacy is 100% respected in the offline world? A billboard for a personal injury lawyer on the highway or an ad for headphones at a subway stop are all examples of segmentation and targeting we experience in the offline worl
23.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Perhaps a bit idealistic but I aspire for a world where companies can segment and target their market while consumers maintain a level of privacy.
24.
by pete_nic 4y ago
> The truth is we’re in a post-truth world, where more than one opinion is valid. You should never trust just one single source of information, without validating what it's telling you, and thinking about the potential motivations a
25.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Excel, and spreadsheets, need a re-branding campaign. They are cloud-based, low-code, ELT tools; these terms are typically associated with buzzy enterprise tech companies, not technology developed in the 1980’s.
26.
by pete_nic 4y ago
Agree with this. When battling Microsoft product can matter less than things like contracts and licensing. I have to believe that businesses are spending so much on Azure that they get Office for free (as an analogy - at a previous employer
27.
by pete_nic 5y ago
Agree, I just downloaded Firefox onto my windows PC this week, experienced none of these things, and the process was really easy. I am in the US, so that could be an explanation.
28.
by pete_nic 5y ago
I agree. There may be no better UX alternative than columnar spreadsheets. Excel shines in scenario analysis when, for example, the data comes from your head. I believe Excel has an opportunity to improve when data comes from external sourc
29.
by pete_nic 5y ago
Non-developer here that likes to try to understand CS. I have latched onto this definition from Stanford: “But fundamentally, computer science is a science of abstraction — creating the right model for thinking about a problem and devising
30.
by pete_nic 5y ago
This is great. As a frequent Google user, I breathed a sigh of relief seeing ad free search results from individuals. Curious - how do you know whether a site is a blog versus something else?

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