Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?
154 points by pella_may 13h ago 118 comments
Ask HN: Selling software to company I work for as an employee
40 points by apohak 3d ago 51 comments
18 mooreds 0 5/23/2025, 6:30:05 PM
I guess it really matters what you need. Is Numbers going to take over accounting firms? No, they need Excel because it's Excel and that's what they use. If you need a free spreadsheet program, there are plenty. Google Sheets, Numbers, LibreOffice, Gnumeric. They're not going to change the way you use spreadsheets, but they'll put shit in columns and calculate to varying degrees of accuracy. Which is what most folks want/need.
https://quantrix.com/products/quantrix-modeler
pyspread would be another interesting comparison:
https://pyspread.gitlab.io/
Really though, spreadsheets don't so much need features per se, but a better interface which will scale to larger datasets and which reduces the likelihood of logical errors --- Quantrix, based on Lotus Improv is one of the few to do this.
The Visicalc → 1-2-3 → Multiplan → Excel → Sheets progression? Mostly steady, incremental improvement. Some steps were great—like internet access and multi-user collaboration—but fundamentally, it’s a straight line. OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Numbers, etc.—they've all been basically just more increments on the same theme.
Only two spreadsheet approaches have ever struck me as _truly_ different. One was Improv. (The other was Xerox Analyst, built in Smalltalk for the intelligence community.)
The opensource option is Flexisheet, but I don't believe it compiles anymore --- it running again would be quite the benison.
There are few options,
1. Named functions https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12504534?hl=en
2. Apps script https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/sheets/func...