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Comment by siraben | Hacker News Reader

Org mode also has a great spreadsheet system[0], making it easy to work with plaintext tables! I used Org mode in a school assignment to generate a gnuplot graph from an Org data table (which also had calculated data using formulas). This all would happen all in Org at compile time, since Org lets you evaluate code snippets[1] as well. The final result is that the table, the graph and the syntax-highlighted gnuplot code would all be put in the LaTeX document, and updating the code or data would take effect immediately when recompiling the document.

There's also other cool things like a habit tracker[2] that can also show you an interactive mode where you can see your progress.

[0] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro...

[1] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html

[2] https://orgmode.org/manual/Tracking-your-habits.html

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The ability to just freely type in a table and it keeps it aligned automatically with basically ASCII art, and allows me to sort or rearrange lines or columns, is just fantastic.

If I really need a "spreadsheet", I will use a dedicated software package (which is sometimes actually Matlab, because often that's what I actually need, except for finance stuff), but so so many times when jotting down notes I just need some hassle-free instant tables.

I don't mean to go all Stallman on you, but MATLAB is the devil's software.

Why?

Let me guess: because it is proprietary, has a terrible license management experience and there is an open source alternative: https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/

I was going to say because it starts array indexes at 1.

Most "scientific" languages have indexes starting in 1 and/or configurable (R, Julia, Fortran, APL). In some applications (finite element methods), it makes sense for indexes to start at negative numbers.

Indexes starting at 1 is good. Offsets starting at 0 is good. Confusing offsets for indexes leads to off-by-one errors. C's "array" notation is taught as being an index, when it's actually an offset.

If Octave were sufficient for me, I think I’d just use SciPy. But I want to use LiveScripts and several other things.

Eh, I think in a thread about org-mode that's an appropriate level of Stallman-ness.

The tables / spreadsheet functionality can be super helpful when you just need to jot down thoughts which lead to comparisons which lead to calculations which lead to helping you decide which path you want to go down. It's really great to not have to leave the context of what I'm doing and just open up an org mode buffer and jot down my thoughts and then come out with an answer that is backed by calculations I'm confident in. Very handy 'back of the envelope' or 'napkin' alternative!

For anyone looking for a good place to start, here's a great resource: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#GettingStarted

Yes, there's a great blog post that describes how this functionality is really helpful to manage your life as lots of little spreadsheets [1].

For me that's the true advantage of Org over Markdown. It has timestamps, spreadsheets and links with citations (e.g. a DOI link type). Plus the ability to get programmatic document views using org-agenda. I can manage my whole life in a really minimal and uncomplicated way.

Of course, you can develop a really fancy Org setup. But I think a minimal one, with these features and defaults is really good enough. Plus, not hard to learn.

[1] http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/spreadsheet.html

I love spreadsheeting in org-mode. It's been very useful at work for sharing complex processes with QA and other devs. With org-babel and SQL I can extract DB data into org tables, manipulate them like a spreadsheet and then do additional things with the result.

Honestly I learned it for my own edification, but it turns out literate programming IS useful in the real world. Sometimes.

I came across this today, which pairs nicely with org-mode:

https://github.com/sulami/literate-calc-mode.el

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