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Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

PG,

You are wrong in this post.

The colloquial definition of a spreadsheet app in about 100% of the world at this time is the ability to do calcs.

This video is fantastic, but what shows is currently purely a layout app (hence the grid nomenclature) - frankly - it is a visual Workflowy.

Also, you know what is a drag on innovation, lack of cordial discussion (I am a perpetrator of this myself - even on HN, I get emotionally involved in something and it takes another HN user's response to give me perspective) - and I think you were harsh in your comment, and rather than foster discussion about this, you attacked the OP.

I am sure all of us agree with: "I think most people agree now that it's valid strategy, particularly in software, to launch a simple version one of something and then iterate rapidly"

But I found nothing snide in the OP at all.

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> The colloquial definition of a spreadsheet app in about 100% of the world at this time is the ability to do calcs.

For me Grid got right the essence how and why some people use spreadsheet for non-calc tasks. If people write long text, they start text editor. If they want to add more "structure", they do not implement new DB application, but they start spreadsheet app.

Especially in corporate world: if manager wants to track tasks (issues, progress of documents) - he starts Excel and uses it like the Grid. The most complex Excel I have seen so far was used for tracking wedding - tasks, guests, deadlines etc ;)

There are many ways how people use general concept of spreadsheet. Some might involve complex calculations, some people use it only as a free-form grid. My guess is that the ratio is 1:10 (in favor of free-form grid). That is why I think BinaryThumb hit the sweet spot and will be successful even if they do not implement calculations at all.

Well I guess if they implement arithmetic they will be fine, the average consumer can do without pivot tables and HLOOKUP. And judging from what they already built they should be able to manage that. I hope they don't teach the app to interpret decimal numbers as dates. This ranks as one of the top stupidest feature ideas in the world. Has a 99% miss rate for me.

I agree with this very much - I was just pointing out though that the term "spreadsheet" to anyone I know is automatically assumed to include the ability to calculate.

I use Excel for most everything (e.g. I do all my patch matrix docs for the DC, MDF, IDF buildouts in excel. Modelling the physical layout of a switch in Excel to show what ports are patched where - and while I am not doing any formulas in these particular docs - sometimes I do (clacing bandwidth, subscription etc...)

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