berto.com

2014-12-21 One cell to rule them all (updated)

For some time now (link) I’ve been fascinated with the potential of spreadsheet cells as the building blocks of programs. They could open General Purpose Computing to the next 1 billion application builders.

Spreadsheets have outgrown their humble beginnings. They started as an accounting tool. Now they power just about any task and department:

• lead generation
• planning marketing campaigns
• building dashboards
• converting, cleaning, exporting data
• managing HR processes (recruitment)
• tracking inventory
• creating complex data models

Why? Because they are very simple to use (link):

• They are 2D. It’s quite intuitive to use table rows and cols to define program relationships.
• They are progressive. You can start with a small calculator and grow by adding more data and logic.
• They are also forgiving, allowing parts of the program to work even when others are unfinished or broken.
• They’re visual. You can add cues about the meaning of cells, like colors and typefaces.
• They’re powerful. Their functions effortlessly perform operations on data, like min, max, etc.
• They are ops-free. No need to compile or deploy them. They can also be shared with others.

This makes them great to build custom tools that are easy to maintain. Non-techies find programming hard; maintaining applications is even harder. Spreadsheets provide the benefits without those problems.

In fact, if we abstract them, they are already close to a generic program or a computer.

Spreadsheet	Program	Computer
Formulas	Logic	Processing
Dependencies	Triggers	Input/ Output
Cells	UI	Input/ Output
Values	DB	Storage

Classic spreadsheets are still behind on things like UI, automation or APIs. They are needlessly ugly and static for today’s day and age.

I have started a company to fix this with others who feel the same pains. We are building Rows, a new spreadsheet, with data Integrations and slick, Live Sharing.!

• we empower end-users as creators, giving them access to modern computation like data & APIs in a spreadsheet;
• we generate slick shareable web apps giving creators a wider audience for their spreadsheets;
• we connect creators to catalyze and expand a community of a billion strong spreadsheet users.

You can follow Rows on twitter. (link).