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Comment by thibautg | Hacker News Reader

The ideal spreadsheet should be a mix of Excel, Geogebra, reactive Jupyter Notebook (like ObservableHQ or Vue.js computed properties), programmable in Python, C#, JavaScript and/or other languages with the ability to embed third-party widgets like maps or custom charts. And decent data connectors with SQL-like query syntax (including JOINs).

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Hi — that’s what we’re working on! Retool (https://tryretool.com) is similar to Excel, except the cells are themselves React components. And you can refer to other components inside the props for each component. You can pull in data either via SQL, APIs, or any other data source we support. Everything inside Retool is also JavaScript, so it’s pretty hackable.

If you’ve got any feedback, please let me know! I’m david@. Thanks!

I read the domain name as Tyre Tool.

Thanks for your feedback! I’ll look more into what we can do. We tried purchasing the .com for around 6 figures, but the buyer wouldn’t sell. I’ll try sending him an email again.

I thought I'd seen a .tool TLD that may have helped you but unfortunately it's .tools instead.

I think this is going to be a great success. All the best!

At that point the line between ideal spreadsheet and ideal dashboard becomes pretty thin which could be interesting.

An acquaintance of mine was working on this really cool spreadsheets startup that mashes up R, Python's SciStack, and Excel into a web-based tool. Definitely worth checking out: https://www.alphasheets.com/

It's kind of telling that all the sibling posts suggest SaaS options. The ironic thing about MS Office these days is that, even if it's still proprietary, you at least get to run it locally as a native application and keep control of your data.

Well, as long as the over the net authentication works so your local copy of Office will let you use it.

Maybe a spreadsheet that runs JS and and NPM. that would be pretty flexible

Check out blockpad.net. It’s getting there.

http://hyperfiddle.net

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