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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Show HN: GS-Calc â A modern spreadsheet with Python integration
badmonster wrote 23 hours 11 min ago:
are there any plans to add real-time collaboration features, like
Google Sheets or Excel Online
jpiech wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
This is a potentially interesting feature - it probably could be
relatively easily extended to the shared environment in GS-Calc as
there are already separate passwords to protect files, the sheet/view
structures and cell ranges and optional sha256 checksums for all the
data categories, but there no plans as such. At the moment you can
just use two script commands to release the opened file, periodically
check whether it's modified, report it and automatically reload the
file.
nemoniac wrote 1 day ago:
LibreOffice has Python integration.
URI [1]: https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/sbasic/python/p...
akdor1154 wrote 1 day ago:
Looks very cool, but Windows only?
jpiech wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks. Yes, that was put off a bit too long, but there are plans to
come up with the multiplatform version this year.
Yiling-J wrote 1 day ago:
[1] can handle 1 billion+ rows and offers native Python support. Also
compatible with Excel and Google Sheets. However itâs a cloud based
solution, and the private hosting option is only available to
Enterprise users.
URI [1]: https://rowzero.io/
tianqi wrote 1 day ago:
It is an interesting tool. I've been struggling with Office Excel's
inability to open large files. I always work with csv in python, and if
a client must review the data in Excel, I take a random sample to
generate a smaller file, then explain to the client that we can't open
the whole in Excel. This really doesn't seem like a modern work.
"a slow, old pc with 8GB RAM"
By the way, this struck me like a humour of era. Oh god it has 8GB RAM.
Cheers! To the good old days.
samzub wrote 1 day ago:
Fully agree, I have found that above 300k rows Excel struggles even
on a good laptop. Not even mentioning the Python integration into MS
Excel that is so unbearably slow that it is much better performing
the calculations outside of Excel first.
I am sold on the website looks and license model!
microflash wrote 1 day ago:
These days I use DuckDB to read massive excel files. DuckDB now
ships with a nice local UI and it also works beautifully with
Datagrip, my preferred database IDE. With SQL, it just becomes a
matter of applying old grease to do whatever analysis I want.
arvindh-manian wrote 1 day ago:
I've been using Tad [0] for this purpose, as it streams in the data.
[0]
URI [1]: https://www.tadviewer.com
sunray2 wrote 1 day ago:
So I'll take a layman's view here since I've only cursory experience of
the big data tasks that this software seems to made for. Or maybe the
pitch is still different and it went over my head.
It loads quick, and works with large data. Crucially, you can view and
edit visually, not only programmatically.
Assuming those already working with such data have Excel and Python
tools etc., the pitch here is that the $39 license fee saves time or
effort. So, is it that the user can spot and correct errors that you
couldn't otherwise do with either Excel or with other big data tools?
And/or otherwise do the necessary data manipulations?
I came across the phrase 'eyes like a shithouse rat' recently, to
describe the people doing final checks at a printing press. I think
there's probably plenty of people out there who would pay $39 for eyes
like a shithouse rat.
Also the website makes me nostalgic :)
dr_kiszonka wrote 12 hours 24 min ago:
I like old-school UIs but I wonder if that look doesn't do the
product a disservice. I think most people would find it much more
appealing if it looked at least as good as tad and rowzero mentioned
in other comments. My first impression was that it is some old, slow
software from 30 years ago, and the plots are not what I would show
to anyone (especially the 3d bar plots). But that's just the looks.
Otherwise, the product is solid.
(Yes, I know that there is plenty of old software that is super
fast.)
jpiech wrote 10 hours 7 min ago:
Yep, the website is being kept simple, in fact too simple and will
have to be eventually redesigned.
It seems the classic (and actually up to date) WinAPI GUI shouldn't
imply the software is being "slow". One could have it both ways and
say it's usually on the contrary where commonly cloned packages
weighing hundreds of MB and performing relatively simple tasks get
a free ride on users' ten(s) of times faster hardware. Then there
is the Wirth's law, May's law etc.
conductr wrote 1 day ago:
It all sounds very compelling , great work! But I have to ask, whatâs
the catch? This almost seems like itâs ready to fully replace Excel
but Iâve seen many things die in that pursuit. What will Excel users
miss by switching?
Iâm donât do a ton to big data stuff, but sometimes despite Excels
stated row and column support- I find it effectively melts down if even
100K/100 of data and forget adding formulas.
dismalaf wrote 1 day ago:
> What will Excel users miss by switching?
The ability to use legacy spreadsheets and macros.
Let's be real, Excel self perpetuates by at once being awful but also
the thing everyone used to use thus must still use.
Lots of spreadsheet apps better than Excel have come and gone over
the years...
ASalazarMX wrote 1 day ago:
MS Office Macros are too easy for untrained users (that think of
themselves as power users) to create, and once they grow big
enough, it's very hard to port them to other applications. They're
the monkey paw of spreadsheets.
cyanydeez wrote 21 hours 40 min ago:
I wonder if anyones gonna eventually just create a wrapper API to
just a vm that runs some stock excel open to a spreadsheet...
tobwen wrote 1 day ago:
VBA and the ability to use Office files with embedded VBA are
disabled in many corporations⦠Some malware in the past used
VBA for their attacks and Microsoft never added a proper sandbox.
jpiech wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks. This is just a set of features that offer better (sometimes
significantly better) performance and make it possible to work with
large data sets in some predictable way, that is, knowing what the
performance is with 100K formulas, you should be able to estimate
how it'll work with 10 millions no matter how much formatting is
applied, added hyperlinks, links to external closed workbooks, lists
etc. That is probably correct, in the upcoming years there might be
no way to compete directly with (the standalone) Excel. Hopefully it
just helps to perform or verify various things way faster than in
Excel with add-ins (or often at all).
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