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Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

Spreadsheets are awesome! They're extremely easy to use databases and make computing data really easy. I wish they were even more programmable than they already are. A map function would be nice...

  = MAP(A1:A, A + 10)

This would be so much nicer compared to a huge mess of ARRAYFORMULAs I'm using right now.

The ability to store multiple values in one cell like a dictionary would be awesome as well. With that I wouldn't have to implement lookup manually.

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Take a look at [0] for a proof of concept how in the future it could be possible to define custom functions inside excel not via textual langauge but via tables inside the sheet.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH2Je6wUvPs

In Grist spreadsheets you can store a dictionary in a cell (here's a random example https://support.getgrist.com/examples/2020-08-invoices/#ente...). It is sometimes handy though it gets ugly if overused I'd say. Grist just became open-source btw https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core#grist (disclaimer, I work there)

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