Comparison of Spreadsheets, advertisement for Grid.is.
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.
ctkhn · 1d ago
It's crazy that the original post didn't cover libreoffice at all. Back in high school my parents stopped buying office licenses for the family computers and as soon as I got a new laptop I moved to libre and it's been great for me making budgets etc but not anything investment banking level. Huge oversight to not even include it.
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.
jonathaneunice · 1d ago
“Based on Improv”? Really?! Makes me want to take an immediate look.
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.)
WillAdams · 1d ago
Be seated when checking the pricing.
The opensource option is Flexisheet, but I don't believe it compiles anymore --- it running again would be quite the benison.
tantalor · 1d ago
Google Sheets
Can define custom/user-defined functions: no
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...