Ask Slashdot: Spreadsheet With Decent Programming Language? 332
First time accepted submitter slartibartfastatp writes "Spreadsheets are very flexible tools for data analysis and transformations, the obvious options being MS Excel and LibreOffice. However, I found increasingly infuriating to deal with the VBA--dialect functions or (even worse) its translated versions. Is there any spreadsheet that allows usage of a decent programming language in its formulae? I found PySpread intriguing, but still very beta (judging from its latest release version 0.2.3). Perl or even javascript would be better options than =AVERAGE(). Do you know any viable alternatives?"
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Re:SIAG - Grid in a Browser (Score:3, Interesting)
Similar concept, but the other end of the technological timeline is the ExtJs grid control [sencha.com] (comes with some excellent docco [sencha.com])
You pick up a whole lot of complexity with the ExtJs framework, but you can pretty much implement a whole spreadsheet on it (someone has! [sencha.com]), and it's all with Javascript since it's in the browser...
Might not be the same experience as local spreadsheets (no saving to a file :-( ), but it is extensible.
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"How shall I make it hard for people to use Excel for just about anything."
I thought Microsoft did a pretty good job of that already.
Seriously... when Windows was still relatively new, 1-2-3 for Windows was pretty good, and there were some other very good spreadsheet programs available (sadly, absent from Wikipedia's spreadsheet history page). Then people started to actually use Microsoft Excel, which they greatly improved and stuck in their Office suite. But it wasn't that their product was better; they just had the OS and "Office" advantage, which pretty much guaranteed them
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Excel was already a robust and popular application on Macs. And the original 123 for Windows was a thin wrapper around the DOS app and not considered very good. The fact that "Office" was half the price of Lotus+WordPerfect didn't hurt either.
Re:My problem is quite the opposite. (Score:4, Interesting)
I heard an interesting story from, oddly enough, a MathWorks rep (the people who make MATLAB) about the early days of Microsoft Excel. I don't know if it's true...I think he said he'd either heard it or read it online from an early Excel developer, but my quick Google-fu didn't turn anything up. In any case, he said that after Microsoft first released Excel, they went out to their business customers to figure out how they could improve it. They were flabbergasted to find out that people were using it in completely different ways than they imagined. Even though (I believe) it was originally designed for data analysis, a great number of people weren't even using it for calculations at all. They were using it for to-do list tracking, calendars, structured text documents, presenting tabular data, etc. That's why Microsoft was the first one to have a spreadsheet that allowed the user flexibility to change its appearance: fonts, colors and the like.
He was explaining this as part of his justification for coming out and talking to us, but I think it's also telling that their customers weren't using it like they expected. I guess this is really just a long way of saying that once you get to the point where quick Excel formula isn't cutting it, it stops being the right tool for the job.
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Are you perhaps thinking of this Joel on Software article "How Trello is different" [joelonsoftware.com], in which Joel writes:
Re:My problem is quite the opposite. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Excel won because it was very much better .. at what the majority of users use spreadsheets for: keeping simple lists. Microsoft realized that early on and optimized for it. Excel is also terriffic these days as a simple graph-paper-oriented drawing program: make the cells square and you can outline and color quite easily. It also does a respectable job at turning a imple set of data into a pretty infographic-style graph.
Excels behavior as a tool for complex financial calculations is simple irrelevent for 99% of its users. It won because it was optimized for doing simple, visual stuff.
Re:My problem is quite the opposite. (Score:5, Interesting)
Excel was okay. Word was acceptable.
Wordperfect was excellent, 123 was excellent.
Wordperfect + 123 was twice the price of Word+Excel+Windows, wasn't integrated and couldn't multitask.
Microsoft outcompeted Wordperfect and Lotus by combining the marketplaces so that they couldn't compete. By the time Wordperfect (+Quattro) and Lotus (+Amipro) created their office suites and targetted the Windows platform, it was already too late.
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Excel is the Crescent Wrench of office software.
The wrong tool for (Almost) every job.
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As a visual thinking I have found the most important tool for programming (which is just another type of solving interesting problems) is a pencil and pad.
While you have an catchy cliche & interesting point I use Excel / OOCalc as a cheap digital notepad which I find quite effective. I can jot partial formulas down, do quick graphs, and have some semi-table-structure while I finalize organization and equations before throwing it into the "real" tool.
There are times a "lab notebook" (whether physical /
MATLAB? (Score:5, Informative)
Not a very elegant language, but way better than any spreadsheet that I know of.
Re:MATLAB? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I agree the submitter is asking the wrong question, and really wants something like matlab instead.
> (and I assume the free Octave must be)
it is. you don't get all the fancy handle graphics ui stuff, but that's no problem and regular plotting works fine. there's ipython notepad + matplotlib for that sort of thing anyway.
see also scilab.
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You can also connect R to Excel. That way you get Excel layouts and those tools, but can utilize R for the calculations and advanced features.
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with R, you don't need spreadsheets (Score:4, Informative)
www.r-project.org/
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www.r-project.org/
With [insert programming language of your choice here] you don't need spread sheets! What kind of programmer worth a thimble full of goat piss uses Excel to do much of anything important anyway?!?! I'm not a programmer and would use Perl, Python or [gasp] PHP to do anything I want with tabular, comma separated values. It just isn't that hard. Excel was made for people who can't program. If you can write code you don't NEED Excel. [shakes head in disgust]
With R you need a spreadsheet to do what R doesn't (Score:4, Interesting)
Like when I want to actually look at my data in column format (scrolling, frozen panes, column hiding, conditional cell colouring anyone?). Or when I need to edit it (e.g. convert ascii strings to something numeric using search/replace). Or when I want to do a quick interactive pivot table. Or a quick sum or count. Or when I want to try out one or two formulas or expressions before I start coding them. O r when I just need a small table to look good for insertion into a document (the best Latex table editors that I know are plug-ins for Excel or Calc: format in spreadsheet, push button, copy-paste Latex code; works every time).
Of course it's possible to do most of those things in R too, if your time time has no value and if you love writing one-off code. I prefer to select the best tool for the job, and use that. Even if that sometimes means using VBA.
Interestingly I find myself using RExcel (integrating R and Excel) sometimes.
Most of the time however I have no time for zealots who tell me that I don't need X,Y, or Z because I supposedly can make do with A,B, or C too. They can e entertaining though, as long as you recognise them for what they are: rants from zealots.
Pandas + IPython Notebook (Score:5, Informative)
It's not exactly a spreadsheet, but Pandas is totally awesome and is useful for many tasks for which you might think of using a spreadsheet.
http://pandas.pydata.org/index.html [pydata.org]
IPython Notebook is sort of like a combination of the normal ipython shell and an IDE. You interact via your browser but it connects to a normal python process on your local (or remote?) system.
http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/dev/interactive/htmlnotebook.html [ipython.org]
I've used these tools together for many tasks for which I might otherwise have used a spreadsheet, particularly for "pivot tables" and time series analysis. Again, even combined they do not a spreadsheet make, but they are in many ways superior. They can handle very large data sets, and best of all you are doing it all in Python.
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I forgot to mention that there is some degree of integration between pandas and ipython notebook so it makes sense to use them together for interactive use.
Also before anybody digs on Python's performance, Pandas is built on NumPy which is written in C so it's relatively fast and memory efficient even on large data sets. NumPy is even working on automatic vectorization and paralelization for those really tough problems.
Just use R (Score:4, Interesting)
Spreadsheets are bad at just about everything. Use R instead. If you really need a spreadsheet, there are modules that act like a spreadsheet. But you'll be doing yourself a favor if you wean yourself off the spreadsheet teat.
R is better suited to this type of task than general purpose languages like Python. Most variables and functions in R are vectorised. It's very rare to ever have to write a for loop, which makes the language much more readable.
R is so good at this kind of thing that you don't need anything special to do a pivot table. Just use tapply() and sum(). There's also a 'reshape' package that is far more flexible than anything found in Excel.
Just do it the other way around (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of a spreadsheet with good programming just program and output a spreadsheet. CPAN has plenty of packages for this.
Re:Just do it the other way around (Score:4, Interesting)
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You can even output to XLSX so that you can do multiple tabs and such.
Still using a normal language and a real DB is much better.
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Yes, but CPAN has packages that do all the nasty work for you.
Re:Just do it the other way around (Score:4, Informative)
I would temper that enthusiasm. I work with accountants, Excel, and VBA.
Spreadsheets offer a familiar and flexible front end for non-tech users. We have spreadsheets where sections are ridge to handle the VBA but exposes data to the end user. It is easy to enter paramaters and see the updates quickily - much harder to do when you have to import a new CSV each time. The accountants then can easily customize the data for their needs – and it still prints out nicely on the printer.
So, while I have issues with Excel / VBA / Spreadsheets in general – sometimes it is the best option.
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No, they are not the best option. It might seem like it now, but I have been down the road, soon there will be much pain.
At the very least get them using a real DB and not VBA. Trust me you will be far better served in the long run.
Re:Just do it the other way around (Score:5, Insightful)
At the very least get them using a real DB and not VBA. Trust me you will be far better served in the long run.
The problem is in most organizations, IT is not responsive to requests to set up these kinds of databases. They especially don't deal with requests that are not precise and require a fast turn-around. Thus you end up with analysts and accountants using Excel and sometimes VBA because they can get the job done quickly and effectively.
And frankly, I don't want my accountants and analysts wasting their time creating databases and learning to write database applications. Their job is to be very good at accounting and analysis, not administering databases.
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Then fix your organization not use a stupid work around. Assuming we can get a license for it we turn these things around in my department in under 48 hours when you don't need new hardware. Since this DB could surely live on an already setup box it would likely be less. I say that because if it were more important or demanding you would not even be considering the method we are talking about.
Your accountants will be doing far more time wasting when it stops working or they get into anything complicated. It
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Using Excel for tasks to which databases are better suited because you have an unresponsive IT organization results in an additional problem on top of the one you started with, rather than dealing with the original problem.
What you probably need in that case is a small number of technical staff "embedded" wi
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I agree with you completely. And if I had control or even influence to get that kind of headcount, I think it would be a fantastic "force-multiplier" in our organization. I dream of the idea of very small teams of IT implementers that could spend a little time with various departments and help streamline their data collection and reporting using standardized tools.
Sadly, in my large company, our IT organization just isn't willing to "invest in throw-away" tools. They only want to do huge capital projects
Re:Just do it the other way around (Score:4, Interesting)
(submitter here)
Yes, I end up doing this once in a while. I also use R, Perl, PHP, or even bash to process some data. However, in some cases it is handy to have a view of the data while you're processing it.
For instance, suppose you need to run a regexp function over the 12nd column of a matrix; usually I save data as a CSV, cat file.csv | perl -ne '@a=split/,/; $tmp = $a[11]; .... ' > new_file.csv, load the new CSV, check for errors, debug, repeat... sometimes is just a one-time task I need to do.
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cat file.csv | perl -ne '@a=split/,/; $tmp = $a[11]; .... ' > new_file.csv, load the new CSV, check for errors, debug, repeat... sometimes is just a one-time task I need to do.
Here is your UUOC [partmaps.org] award :D
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Those AltaVista and DejaNews links are *awesome*, dude!
python embedded in excel (Score:5, Informative)
https://datanitro.com/index.html
I've used it a bit and it's pretty fantastic
Version numbers... (Score:3)
Don't assume that a "low" version number means it's unusable. The project has commits going back to at least December 2009. Not all software is versioned with the assumption that 1.0 = finished.
Re:Version numbers... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Not all software is versioned with the assumption that 1.0 = finished."
This is the problem. This should be true: version 1.0 should be a statement by the author that the software has reached maturity for its initial, core feature set. Users should be able to rely on this. Version 0 should be when you write your first line of code; less than 1.0 should be initial implementation effort; 1.0 should mean first stable, complete public release; and full-number versions thereafter should indicate compatibility shifts or otherwise large functional jumps.
Let's get together on this, open source nerds. Give up on the fetish for teensy weensy version numbers. I know you think it's cool, but it's not, it makes obvious that you have no regard for the meaning of version numbers. (On the flip side, software like Chrome should stop using full-number increments for every single release. That also razes the meaning of version numbers.)
Re:Version numbers... (Score:4, Informative)
"Let's get together on this, open source nerds."
There is already something of an industry-wide standard for version numbers, and it fits with your definition pretty closely. It's just that many don't follow it. Including outfits like Mozilla, in recent years.
The standard calls for major and minor version numbers, followed (optionally) by a build or release number. E.g., 2.3.456.
Version 1.0 is supposed to be the initial, stable, core release, just as you say. But some groups (like Mozilla) insist on jumping the major version for relatively minor reasons, and others seem to get stuck at version 0.5 forever. But that's not because they can't agree on a standard. It's because they just don't follow it.
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If few people follow a standard, is it a standard? Cue the tree in the woods.
You make a good point. I think we are on the same team. I'm just putting in a good word for our team so that maybe others will join it. I think ours is a team of reasonable people with a moderate and helpful suggestion to improve the world in a small way. I'm always surprised that even this suggestion divides people.
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Heck we have windows version 8.0 that's clearly an early pre-alpha build.
Re:Version numbers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. I am advocating that version numbers should carry broadly-recognizable meaning. I accept your different opinion but I disagree with it.
In fact I think it would be silly for you to try to defend the suggestion that "version numbers should have no inherent meaning". None? Would you advocate that version numbers be non-sequential? After all, Mac OS 10.6 came after Mac OS 10.5, but maybe next they could release Mac OS 3.6, and then Mac OS 31.5, and then Mac OS -2, and then Mac OS Pi.
Of course version numbers carry meaning. They can't carry lots and lots of meaning, but they can carry a little bit. Why even bother with dotted-decimal version numbers if the dots and decimals mean nothing? Just use integers, but even monotonically increasing integers have "meaning" in that they convey directional advancement of the software. Likewise, if you use dates, dates carry meaning. Other than random numbers, it's difficult to imagine a version numbering scheme that has "no inherent meaning".
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Very well put. Agreed on all points! Mod parent up and all that.
The very nature of of version numbers being continuously increasing and that we can infer that if version x > version y then x is newer then y is indeed assigning semantic meaning to the version numbers.
That said I don't see any way of enforcing such a standard except 'peer pressure' and of course some projects will rebel against it just to show off how hipster they are, and others will ignore it because of various flavors of NIH syndrome.
Depends (Score:5, Informative)
If you want a great spreadsheet: http://www.quantrix.com/ [quantrix.com]
If you want to beef up the programming language but are fine with Excel: http://www.wolfram.com/products/applications/excel_link/ [wolfram.com]
If you are talking non commercial: Siag (suggested above) is cool: http://siag.nu/index.shtml [siag.nu]
This hasn't seen much activity in a decade but Haxcel: http://www.johanmalmstrom.se/haxcel/ [johanmalmstrom.se] is Haskell in a spreadsheet.
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If you want a great spreadsheet: http://www.quantrix.com/ [quantrix.com]
Whoa, pricey. They could probably rule the world if they released an ultra-simple free version and a somewhat more featured cheap version.
http://www.omegahat.org/RGnumeric/ (Score:2)
Definition (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the definition of a decent programming language?
It's a pretty ambiguous requirement.
C? Java? Python? Perl? Javascript?
Each is 'decent' in it's own way.
Another way to ask is this: What do you feel the shortcomings of the Excel VB language variant are?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
A "decent" language is one which does not use any of the following keywords:
Then
Dim
Sub
End
Re:Definition (Score:4, Funny)
bash uses "then" and it's a great language.
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If you're going to complain about a programming language on the basis of its 3-4 letter syntactic sugar, you can go right ahead, but don't expect to be taken seriously. Yeah, it's a BASIC dialect, so fucking what? Yes, I know the Djikstra quote; it's quite demonstrably wrong and, frankly, stupid. A lot of excellent programmers today and in the past learned on BASIC. Let's see...
Then / End: semantically identical to { }, but a bit less overloaded than those characters are *and* easier to understand when lear
Python or Javascript in LibreOffice and OOo (Score:5, Informative)
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Libre Office support Logo also!
That a pretty good programming language
Re:Python or Javascript in LibreOffice and OOo (Score:4, Informative)
And the docs for Python in Open Office are...
Oh right - there aren't any docs.
Just use R (Score:2, Informative)
Spreadsheets are actually terrible tools for data analysis. It's virtually impossible to document what you did with a spreadsheet, and make it reproducible and debuggable.
What you want is R, the Free software language based on Bell Labs "S" programming language for doing statistics and data analysis. R is like the fully outfitted machine shop compared to a spreadsheet's screwdriver and a hammer in a plastic box.
http://www.r-project.org
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What are you doing? (Score:3)
What are you doing with a spreadsheet that you find the built-in functionality so limiting?
It's possible that perhaps you're getting to the "hairy edge" of what a spreadsheet is capable of. Depending on your application, perhaps you need a more specialized -- or more general purpose -- tool, here.
Others have suggested MATLAB. If not that, how about Mathematica?
Maybe you've outgrown the scope of a spreadsheet and need a general purpose programming language, perhaps one that you can get a reporting package that suits your requirements. If you're using lots of VBA, why not go all out and use VB, or any other general purpose solution (C, Java, Python, etc., etc., etc.)?
Are you doing signal processing or control or other engineering stuff? Perhaps DaDiSP.
Some more info on your particular needs might get a more specific and useful answer from someone here that's done the same thing.
Re:What are you doing? (Score:4, Interesting)
What are you doing with a spreadsheet that you find the built-in functionality so limiting?
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every screw looks like a nail. When the only tool you know how to use is a hammer, it is the screw's fault that it won't go in like a nail when you hit it.
I remember many many years ago, the entire corporate sales database where I worked was kept in a text editor. When I pointed out that there was something called "ingres" and that maybe it would be better to keep the data in that, I was told that the person who managed the "database" knew how to use the text editor and didn't want to learn anything else. I was also told that I wasn't hired to write database code for the administration of the company, I was hired to write scientific data processing code.
Part of the problem was that DEC supplied the text editor with the system. That made it the tool of choice, even for problems it was very poor at handling. Likewise, if "large computer company" provides few or no real programming tools other than extensions to a spreadsheet, then the spreadsheet becomes the programming tool of choice. I've had several recent projects that I've had to code in javascript/HTML simply because I couldn't expect them to be used if they were programmed in perl, because web browsers come with the system and perl does not.
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What are you doing with a spreadsheet that you find the built-in functionality so limiting?
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every screw looks like a nail. When the only tool you know how to use is a hammer, it is the screw's fault that it won't go in like a nail when you hit it.
He didn't say he was an orthopedic surgeon. That does change things . . .
Mathematica is vastly superior to Matlab (Score:4, Interesting)
For symbolic math, Mathematica is vastly superior to Matlab. In my comprehensive exam, Matlab said if I increased the gain of a control system to 1E8, then the following error would be zero. However, for that particular control system, I knew that this result had to be wrong. For modestly large gains, the average of the absolute value of the error should have been a constant, and unaffected by the gain. At gains of 1E8, most physical systems go unstable. The issue shook my confidence on the written portion of my comprehensive exam.
SPICE and Mathematica computed the correct result. The key difference is Mathematica is a symbolic solver. It solves the formulas, without making unnecessary approximations. Spice is absolutely amazing for control system work. It analyzes stuff that most users would be unable to model with Matlab. In particular, SPICE models output to input capacitive coupling correctly, where most other models ignore the issue. Thus, SPICE will frequently predict that a system will be unstable if the gains are sufficiently large, whereas Matlab will often predict everything is good. Additionally, after knowingly blowing the results on the written, I verified the result on a physical system. I wanted to be really sure I had the correct answers for the oral portion of the comprehensive exam.
Matlab is a numeric computation package. In the case of control systems, it quietly converts Laplace transforms into discrete time z-Transforms before computing the system response. Never trust numeric results when they disagree with the theory. To this day, I still wonder if the professor that asked that particular exam question knew about this bug in Matlab, and deliberately asked the exam question from hell.
Use a decent relational database (Score:2)
I find that a decent SQL database platform is better for complex data manipulation. Install SQL Server 2012 Express Edition With Advanced Services (it's a mouthful, but it's free). It supports import/export from Excel spreadsheets, and a number of other data formats, and also includes Reporting Services for creating nice presentable reports without coupling the layout with your data storage (as with a spreadsheet).
Some SQL knowledge can take you a lot further than Excel will on its own.
look at geogebra (Score:2)
the link: http://www.geogebra.org/cms/ [geogebra.org]
Stop. Stop right now. (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop programming in your fucking spread sheet. It's not an application development system.
If you start having more code than you have data in there, you're doing it wrong.
On the other hand, I got paid a pretty penny to turn a spread sheet system into a real application not so long ago,
Re:Stop. Stop right now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Turning a spreadsheet into an application is not programming. It's being an accountant.
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Hi, Accountant here.
I use spreadsheets a bit for data manipulation but most of the big stuff I do inside our data warehouse using SQL. It is very rare that I need to venture outside of pivottables, vlookups, sumifs, countifs, or if statements inside of a spreadsheet.
If you are having to make extensive use of programming skills in your spreadsheet I think you have a hammer and a nail problem (every problem looks like a nail cause all you have is a hammer).
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and all the time I thought a data warehouse was a warehouse for data and could be used for more than just data mining ... damn those marketers for fooling me !
Java + Apache's HSSF? (Score:2)
Don't know if it would work for what you're wanting. Just throwing it out there.
Google Refine (now Open Refine) has python (Score:2)
SciLab (Score:2)
Without knowing what you're actually doing... (Score:2)
Without knowing what you're actually doing it's kind of hard to make any recommendation.
Where I work, we find Tableau [tableausoftware.com] to be a good middle-ground between Excel and full SQL environments. It's not really a spreadsheet perse though.
SPSS (Score:2)
Of course 'it depends on the job', but I'd suggest having a look at SPSS, if you have access or are rich. Every college and university uses it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPSS
It has a code view for your queries (i am weird and only use SQL) and even some online 'libraries' of often used search strings (consult google). There used to be a FOSS alternative, PSPP, but I never used it.
I'd like to hear any feedback on my suggestion. The type of data analysis I did was either large data pulls based and de-duping on a f
Or Open Source PSPP (Score:2)
LAMP (Score:2)
Be a programmer, not a Sheet enthusiast. I needed UI but simpler processing, so the ~LAMP stack worked for me (Linux, Cherokee, MariaDB, Python) . Python fits everywhere here from heavy data analysis to being web front-end. Often a one-line SQL statement did more than I needed.
Actually your mistake is (Score:2)
Using a spreadsheet and not a real program. There are countless frameworks and libraries for data analysis found in any real programming language if you accept the idea of writing a real program, opposed to trying to shoehorn a real language into a spreadsheet app. Remember, spreadsheets are designed for managers, and we all know how stupid managers are right?
Also the idea of looking for some obscure spreadsheet alternative just because you don't like the syntax is another fail. Not sure what you are doi
Open Source or Proprietary? (Score:2)
OpenSource: QTiplot http://soft.proindependent.com/qtiplot.html [proindependent.com] uses Python as its scriptiing language
Prop: OriginPro http://www.originlab.com/ [originlab.com] - can use C , LabsTalk and has its own C-based X-functions.
Admittedly, they are geared towards scientific data analysis, but have powerful graphing and programming capabilities.
A functional language like ML would work well (Score:2)
I have always thought a functional language like ML or Haskell would work well in a spreadsheet.
The compact functional code would visually fit well in a cell expression. And functional concepts like map and foldr would fit would work great for aggregating columns.
Also, it is insane that Excel does not have regular expression functions. Regular expression search/replace would work sooo well in a spreadsheet.
I'll never need one... (Score:2)
Re:COM Automation (Score:4, Informative)
To my knowledge, C# can be used to write plugins for Excel, which should be able to handle the more complex macros.
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Yes, both outside COM automation and vSTO plugins that run in Excel http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/hh128771.aspx
Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps (Score:5, Informative)
Wow... quite possibly one option that would be WORSE than VBA.
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Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps (Score:5, Funny)
If you can keep it to rslt = function(cell1, cell2, cell3) then it's OK, but in practice it seems to involve rslt = use.of.some.object.you.didnt.expect where goat.sacrifice(was.successful) [but.I.lied.to.you]
Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you on about - JS is quite a neat little language for solving small problems, and you can do functional programming in it if that's your thing. There's a reason MIT etc are turning from Scheme (which I love) to JS as a teaching lanuage.
The only part of JavaScript that really sucks is the first four letters, but don't be put off by that.
Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps (Score:5, Insightful)
What, exactly is wrong with =AVERAGE()?
Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps (Score:5, Funny)
What, exactly is wrong with =AVERAGE()?
It's not too bad, but it's not too good either.
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Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps (Score:4, Funny)
Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps (Score:5, Informative)
What, exactly is wrong with =AVERAGE()?
It's not too bad, but it's not too good either.
Try writing a replacement sometime from scratch, and see how hard it is.
It intelligently only averages cells that are filled with numeric values, allows easy input of multiple ranges of cells, allows direct input of numbers as function parameters, and has an easy to remember name.
If the built-in functions (which include some serious statistics and analysis functions) don't do the job, there are third-party add-ons that likely do. If you absolutely need something unique, then VBA is quite easy to use. The only real thing I don't like about Excel is the "error in a cell is propagated to all cells that reference it", with no way to disable it, and no formatting codes that hide errors. For example, there are a lot of times when I end up with divide by zero because a cell isn't filled in yet, but that's OK (like a table that calculates price/quantity, when a row hasn't been entered yet), and the only way around it is to use the "=IF(ISERROR(...))" construct. It would be much nicer if the existing "positive;negative;zero;text" custom formatting added ";error" to the end.
Re:Are you sure you want to use a spreadsheet? (Score:4, Interesting)
I mostly agree, but MySQL is probably the wrong choice of database. For most things that you would consider using a spreadsheet for, you probably aren't concerned with multiple users with concurrent access, so you don't need a DB server, and SQLite is a much better choice. If you do need a DB server for some reason to back your spreadsheet-like analysis, PostgreSQL is probably a much better choice (if nothing else, because of the much richer query functionality; CTEs, particularly, are very useful for analysis.)
Re:Already there (Score:5, Funny)
Excel can already use VBA, which in turn can use IronPython.
Done.
Awesome; but not quite done. At that point you can run an X86 emulator inside it [google.com] and boot Linux. Then you can run Firefox inside it and finally, you will have access to a sensible language [brainfuck.tk].
Actually, this is one of the best Ask Slashdots ever. A language war enclosed inside a user interface design war enclosed inside a programmer pet hate.
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Re:Already there (Score:5, Funny)
And you can do it all in Emacs.
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And you can do it all in Emacs.
Actually ... yes. Emacs 'calc' is very powerful and of course you can extend it any way you want in elisp. There are also a couple of spreadsheet modes; SES isn't bad for some purposes, and there is a sort of spreadsheet built in to org-mode tables.
I am only partly serious here; while I use Emacs spreadsheet modes for simple stuff (tracking and doing stats on exercise, for instance) it's certainly not meant for The Big Stuff. But Emacs calc---- that can do some pretty impressive work.
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No spreadsheets are great because of shits like you who mock and laugh in people's faces when they only want to do some simple calculation tomorrow and you decide that it would be better for them to use a custom written library with awesome GUI interface. The problem with you is that they want to get done tomorrow not wait three months for you to get your shit in gear!
Seriously, I am a programmer, but I totally get why people use Excel. Programmers and devs have this problem in that they cant do something q
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+1 Informative, +1 Takedown
I'm kind of teaching myself programming (for web crap) but I have a weird database and data analysis background that is very helpful but causes me problems when I get deep into OOP shit...
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Well, like they say, "when all you have is a battery-powered drill from Home Depot, make lemons." Or something like that.
Re:libre office (Score:4, Informative)
I think OpenOffice/LibreOffice can be interfaced with a number of programming languages
It can. And even more APIs. Almost all of which are cryptic, cumbersome and/or poorly documented.
It can be worth it once you learn how ... assuming you have enough sanity left.