
The world needs a better spreadsheet - mmonihan
http://blog.voyager.vc/the-world-needs-a-better-spreadsheet/
======
abraae
Eons ago, I worked for Lotus Software (way before they belonged to IBM) on an
exiting new product - their flagship Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet product, in those
days the preeminent spreadsheet offering in the world, ported to the IBM
mainframe.

I travelled around Europe as we sold this to large corporations who wanted the
power of the spreadsheet, but multipled by a gazillion times and made multi-
user.

Almost every customer was so receptive and excited, it was a fun and job and
easy sell.

But later, we learnt that those customers were in fact the early adopters, and
Lotus never did manage to cross the chasm with that product. Later Microsoft
produced Excel and..well the rest is history.

My conclusion: the world doesn't need a better spreadsheet. Existing
spreadsheet technologies are good enough for the hokey, half-baked things that
people like to build with them.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I like that you're bringing up Lotus, but I was thinking of a different
product: Notes.

It's from another digital software age and from experience, hard not to think
of the applications created with it as archaic monstrosities, yet there was
something there.

In many ways it was what the OP is talking about: a networked formbuilder that
allowed for people with technical skills roughly equivalent to that of an
Excel superstar to build actual line of business apps.

For those same reasons, it had lots of issues. Often a spreadsheet is the
right choice, maybe not when it gets to be 200MB and corrupts itself because
multiple people are accessing the same file across the network.

Notes apps worked until they didn't, but are still kind of fascinating in
their awfulness.

~~~
Spooky23
Apps like Lotus and Access get a bad rap that is unjustly deserved. People did
a lot of amazing things with those applications.

The presence of zombie Notes apps that spew out of control is more a statement
about IT than the platform. My mom, not a power user, was a public health
nurse. She put together with a sophomore intern what grew into a good sized
disease outbreak tracker after IT failed to deliver. All in Notes.

The IT idiots discovered it and got all puffy. They siphoned off funding and
stuck its "enterprise" replacement into some portfolio process. 5 years later
and $5-6M spent they launched a replacement that didn't quite do what it
needed to do. She retired almost 10 years ago, and that little app still lives
for a few use cases.

------
canadian_voter
_Perhaps, In the end, the best piece of software is the one you never had to
build in the first place._ \-- The Article

 _Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to
be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?_ \--
SICP

I think the real uncanny valley here lies in maintaining software, not
designing it. Business needs change over time and software must adapt.

I think the best option is to build your own software. Understand it top to
bottom and make it do exactly what you need to do. Sadly this is not possible
for most people.

The next best option, however, is not to spend $3,000 on something written
over a weekend that won't be supported down the road. The best option is to go
with the Salesforce solution.

My first programming gig (in high school) was automating a process that
involved manipulating index cards and doing some basic math. I also trained
them on how to operate, maintain and extend the system. The end result worked
fine for a few years, until it was eventually replaced with some elaborate
proprietary system that cost about as much every 3 months as the whole system
I delivered. But that system came with ongoing support that obviated the need
for any in-house expertise. So they felt the additional expense was
worthwhile. And I was happy not to have to take the support calls.

Edit: And ultimately both systems were more accurate and saved time over the
manual process.

~~~
mmonihan
OP. This is a great point. The activation cost for you to respond to support
calls is probably more than the company would be willing to pay you. Which is
why SaaS businesses with support teams that benefit from scale are the de
facto model for these businesses.

I think there's a version of something like Microsoft Access that can take
away a lot of support requests.

I get a ton of requests related to lists of collections within the app, which
could be maintained by the users themselves.

~~~
snuxoll
> I think there's a version of something like Microsoft Access that can take
> away a lot of support requests.

Yes, and it's called Salesforce (or Dynamics if you like more pain than
Salesforce already causes).

I have better things to do than write a full front-to-back webapp to organize
garbage scattered around in spreadsheets, so it's been a lifesaver since I can
create a new object or field in a couple clicks (and if I need to write some
custom UI or backend code I still have the option to do so).

------
markoutso
I have been reading HN for more than 3 years. It is like an addiction. I have
never felt smart enough to comment something but honestly, this is the worst
piece of literature I have ever read.

The writer is just rambling on irrelevant stuff while trying to be smart and
promote himself and his company.

It's not even good marketing.

~~~
noddingham
Agreed. I'm not sure exactly what I read, but I couldn't piece together a
single coherent line of thought as we jumped from sketchy individual
developers to requirements gathering, something about UX, valleys, zombies,
Salesforce as a CRM (except it can do anything really 'cause it's a platform),
to the closing statement about perhaps not building the application you
thought you needed. And what did it all have to do with spreadsheets, or
building a better one?

------
meredydd
I'm seeing a lot of hate for spreadsheets here.

First, to state the obvious: in the time your least-favourite Excel sheet took
to grow from simple time-saver to sprawling Cthuloid monster, it has probably
saved _multiple person-years of effort_. You could spend the next six months
rebuilding it all "properly", and it's still comically positive ROI.

Spreadsheets are also a unique, top-level category in computing as a whole. By
my count, there have only ever been three schemes of interaction with
computers (with any significant adoption):

1\. Shrink-wrap. Use the software you've been given. Read the manual; that's
what it does, no more.

2\. Programming language. It's text, it's got syntax, it's got the same basic
constructs as any other programming language. You know they're all the same,
because once you know a few languages, you can start using a new one in an
hour or two.

3\. Spreadsheets. Visual interaction, scaling smoothly from "simple
calculator" to "this is the backbone of our whole business".

Spreadsheets really are _that_ fundamental a discovery in the field of
computing. Give them some love.

~~~
goatlover
But why not word processors or presentation software (PowerPoint)? How about
Photoshop? That's pretty big.

Edit: oh, you're not computing something so much as you're using shrink
wrapped software to build documents, presentations, or manipulate images. So,
not quite the same.

As for programming languages, I disagree. You don't go from only knowing say
Python, PHP and Java to being able to use Haskell in a few hours. There's a
substantial learning curve in being able to use a sufficiently different
programming language. And no, "Hello, World" or typing in a few simple
commands from a tutorial don't count.

Do you suppose the a C programmer is just going to be building a meaningful
Smalltalk or Lisp program after a couple of hours? Or that a Javascript
programmer is going to be whipping up C++ applications in that amount of time?

~~~
gitonup
I've seen orgs run on Excel spreadsheets: one electric utility I worked for
described their load in one massive Excel sheet. Where I think this analogy
falls apart is that so many spreadsheets come to depend on macros (which my
experience did, via ODBC), which makes them a meld between 2 and 3. I've
definitely written systems at level 2 -- at the same company -- that have had
way more ROI than the spreadsheet based system that was previously employed,
but the spreadsheet could have employed macros to do the same thing.

------
niftich
Spreadsheets are the poor man's data processing pipeline; they ship with a
wealth of numeric and data munging functions and give you an easy-to-
understand visual representation of your datastore. You can use them to crunch
numbers and graph, but also to implement fairly complex business logic, and
they accomplish this within the confines of an application you probably have
already bought anyway. They're the epitome of the entrepreneurial spirit you
need to survive adversity in the SMB space.

Spreadsheets don't succeed outside of pure numerical calculations because
they're _that good_ , they succeed because they're versatile and ubiquitous,
and everyone already has Excel or Google Sheets. If _everyone_ already had,
say, Sharepoint, or even some drag-and-drop no-cost rapid application
generator that requires zero sysadmin skills to run, that would be the new
baseline.

~~~
snarf21
I agree. The problem is also that most people who are running SMB aren't
experts at growing their data model. Over time, the owner needs new objects
(rows, columns, sheets, etc.) and new things that need calculated and tracked
_BUT_ they also need to associate these new things to the old things. They are
not going to be able to renormalize the data model (they don't know they
have). They make new sheets or Excel files and do the best they can. It is
flexible and can do whatever they want but that doesn't make it more
efficient. I don't think that most of these people need new or custom
software. They need someone to come in once a year and help them re-optimize
their processes against the new reality. Excel might be enough but there has
to be an investment in making that an efficient tool.

~~~
goatlover
Sounds like someone should come in and turn that into a database that feeds
excel.

------
chowes
I agree with this in premise, and had a very similar idea with a friend
earlier this year - that many of the business apps out there are really just
CRUD apps.

The main piece of feedback that we got when pitching this idea was that you're
going to end up as a master-of-none. Yes, we could give you the tools to set
up Customer, Ticket, etc. objects. But in order to win over Zendesk, you're
going to need all of the features they provide. Chat, ticket queues,
automation, etc. Business users also don't want to be architects - a turnkey
solution that solves 80% of their use case is better than a blank slate that
they have to start thinking about schemas, relationships, etc. The old saying
"nobody ever got fired choosing IBM" can now just as easily be applied to VP
of Sales picking Salesforce.

That being said, there ARE tools to do this: Quickbase (enterprise) and
Airtable come to mind. I'm curious if the author has looked into using one as
their base instead of Google Forms/Sheets.

~~~
mmonihan
OP. This is an idea I've been going back and forth on for a while.

I have checked out Quickbase, Airtable, Ragic, etc.

What I've noticed is that I always want the ability to go to code when I need
to. My clients are all on Rails apps today, and I'm happy with rails as a dev
solution. And, I don't want to give up that flexibility.

However, there are use cases where I want to just use a form builder UI to
manage a data model. I've been using [http://form.io](http://form.io) for that
recently. You use a form builder to generate a UI and an API simultaneously
and submissions are stored in Mongo. And, I can build the app as I want using
their API.

I think that paradigm is the future, it just needs more refinement.

~~~
chowes
Ah alright - so definitely more aimed at people who can code. Ours was more
focused at end-users.

That is one area where Salesforce shines. APEX and Visualforce can get you
just about anything you may need for customizations. I'm sure something
similar will pop up, but then people will complain about having to sell your
soul to them, too :)

Workato is another nice tool to augment Quickbase & Airtable. It's like
Zapier, but allows you to add some code (Ruby in fact) to do custom hooks.

I guess it really depends on how complex you need to go, which then brings me
to my point about being master-of-none - at that point you're losing your
abstraction and essentially building a custom app.

~~~
snuxoll
Salesforce is a great solution for stupid CRUD apps that require some custom
code here or there. A year ago I started with 8 users, now I'm at 40 and
counting - I don't have to waste time developing a front-to-back web
application to keep track of garbage that was stored in spreadsheets, and my
users get rapid turnaround on most changes (hey, add this new object or field
please!).

And if your users don't need to access a lot of different "types" of data
(objects) the $25/mo "App Cloud" license is a cheap way to get going.

------
hbbio
"The world needs a better spreadsheet"

I read this when I was a teen (as that's long ago). It was at a time Lotus was
going to launch Improv in 1993! Improv was the attempt made by a very smart
team at Lotus to reconquer the crowd that went to Excel.

But as you can guess, the great product never found its market (or never grew
beyond a niche) and was killed a few years later.

cf.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv)

~~~
n00b101
It's worth noting that Quantrix Modeler [1] (founded in 2002) did carry on the
torch after Lotus Improv, and continues to exist. That said, it's not clear
how much traction Quantrix got either. It was bought out in 2010 by IDBS and
te deal value wasn't disclosed, but it was reported that they had only nine
employees at the time of acquisition. Another very interesting earlier attempt
in this market was Javelin [2].

[1] [https://www.quantrix.com/](https://www.quantrix.com/) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_Software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_Software)

------
Avshalom
While I'm not entirely sure if "the world needs a better spreadsheet" is a
stand in for "accessible prototyping tools" it's worth noting that things like
Quantrix Modeler and DADiSP are the better spreadsheets it's just that no one
uses them because Excel (and by extension Excel work-alikes) have path
dependency on their side.

~~~
infinite8s
And those products are thousands of dollars a year while Excel comes bundled
with every mass market computer.

~~~
Avshalom
Yeah, fair enough, that too.

I happen to think "paying for good tools" is a good thing but as a
student/stockboy: A thousand dollars is a fucking lot of dollars, especially
if your business is still running on debt.

------
conservajerk
Fundamentally software development is about writing and managing complex
systems. Excel and the like have limited capability to manage complexity and
any simple system built with excel eventually turns to bad smelling
unmaintainable chaos. So then people build tools that manage complexity better
but are still "easy to use". And then those tools become so complex that
software developers are the only people who understand how to use them. And
then what's the difference between said tool and writing real code? After
10-20 years we are back to where we started. I wonder exactly how many times I
will see this in my career?

------
giardini
Not really. Most spreadsheets(~88%) have errors.

"Sorry, Your Spreadsheet Has Errors (Almost 90% Do)"

[https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2014/09/how-to-reduce-
spread...](https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2014/09/how-to-reduce-spreadsheet-
errors.html)

The 2008 source article is

"What We Know About Spreadsheet Errors"

[http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/SSR/Mypapers/whatknow.htm](http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/SSR/Mypapers/whatknow.htm)

~~~
wffurr
If you read the blog, you'd see that the system he's suggesting is somewhat
more robust than a spreadsheet. His example at the end is the Google Forms
builder, which at least does a modicum of input validation, unlike your
typical direct-entry spreadsheet.

And the point is not to completely dismiss the idea with a glib soundbite like
that, but to actually take seriously building tools _like_ spreadsheets that
allow non-technical users to build data-driven systems.

------
richardboegli
It exists already. It's called MS Access.

~~~
snuxoll
Except Access has many of the same issues as Excel. You can work around some
of the nastier stuff like file locking by using liked database files and
having everyone save their own copy of the "frontend" database file, but it's
more of a pain in the ass than it's worth (and oh god is it slooow).

------
tmaly
I agree, I automate generation of hundreds of spreadsheets a day.

I would like to see more scripting/automation features on email.

~~~
mmonihan
OP. I was actually thinking something similar. Do you mean the ability to send
out emails with app data rather than code and orchestrate them yourself?

~~~
tmaly
I was thinking more on the processing of incoming emails, ones with
attachments or routing. I worked years ago on an enterprise product that did
this, but it was integrated with large printer.

~~~
iamwil
What data was being sent back and forth? Why did you need to process the
attachments?

------
smarx007
Quip (a better spreadsheet) or Django web framework (its ORM and built-in
admin can do wonders) are worth mentioning. Another example that comes to mind
is how Vox uses Google Sheets for content & config:
[https://product.voxmedia.com/2014/7/29/5863004/take-a-
peek-a...](https://product.voxmedia.com/2014/7/29/5863004/take-a-peek-at-the-
code-that-powered-the-verge-50)

------
jon49
I built an app in Excel 5 years ago. It was a heat map for events, for
stadiums, theaters, etc. I would build the static CSS/HTML and write out the
files from Excel. It is still in use today. After having stopped working on it
for a couple of years a minor bug was brought up to me recently. Luckily I had
a windows computer again with Excel installed. Excel is a great platform for
building prototype apps, or even long lived apps - especially 10 years ago. It
is amazing the power that Excel has. But, a proper app should be built in
JavaScript with a solid back end (F# being my fave). Although developing in
Excel was a bit clunky it was amazingly easy to get beautiful customer
interfaces and beautiful forms.

------
dendory
Being part of design meetings, it's amazing how many endless customizations
and workflow adjustments people like project managers and consultants like to
request for a new piece of software. But when it comes down to it, most users
don't want a complex, hard to understand interface that has so many features
it's supposed to improve everyone's productivity. Most people want to use
their spreadsheet, their Outlook calendar and their IE browser. Not because
it's best at the task, but because that's what they know and are used to.

~~~
bottled_poe
Of course users don't want anything complex, and if the resulting custom
software makes a task more confusing and error-prone than a spreadsheet, the
developers and designers have failed.

Instead, I read this comment as meaning a few different things:

1\. It is difficult to get users to try something different.

2\. Most users don't comprehend the limitations of the software with which
they are already familiar.

------
robohamburger
Once you get all the security, backups, data validation and whatever
exporting/search capability the people need a system like this is never
simple. I wonder how happy they really were with his software vs relieved to
have a semi-functioning system.

It still seems like something like this is in the realm of possible.
Salesforce mostly does this, but its UI is garbage and most people end up
hiring implementors for it.

------
tyingq
Quickbase does an amazing job with allowing non-tech users to create their own
crud apps, and the model is very spreadsheet like, including grid edit if you
want.

The trouble is the pricing model. $25/user per month for the edition that's
not hobbled. For some use cases, that makes sense. For others, it's just way
too high.

------
funkdified
Airtable is a better spreadsheet imho.

~~~
postscapes1
+1 on Airtable, it's the only app I have used in the past 5 years that fits
great into workflows and allows me to peer into and sort the data based on the
task / view I need.

------
choward
What's with that garbage at the bottom right? I'm trying to read your article.
Why would I want to talk to you before reading your article? Made me stop
reading.

------
balls187
Charged a close friend $3,000 for a few days worth of work?

~~~
crooked-v
$100 x 8 x 3 = $2400, and that's for just 8 hours a day with a pretty gentle
contracting rate.

~~~
balls187
$100 per hour for a Rails crud app?

For a close friend?

------
wheelerwj
how do people get a "hey HN" welcome line up on their site so quickly? This
was posted here less than 2 hours ago. Do people really monitor incoming
referrals hourly?

~~~
blhack
I mean...yes? Back when I had a dedicated office, there was a screen that was
tail -f on various logfiles watching website traffic.

My sites were all personal projects, so the traffic was low enough that I
could notice an uptick in traffic visually.

Also things like google analytics etc.

------
ianamartin
I swear to god, anytime anything pops up on a website when I click on it, it
seriously pisses me off.

A fucking chatbox? I already hate your company.

A fucking chatbox from the author of a blog? I hate you and everything you
stand for. You are what's wrong with the internet. You should know better, and
you do. But you do this anyway. Just stop.

~~~
mmonihan
OP. Yea, that was interesting on my end using chat. I probably would hate that
on your end as much you did. I did have some pretty fun conversations though.
I removed it, because that got exhausting.

~~~
david927
I, for one, really liked it. And thanks for the chat, Matt!

