[HN Gopher] I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly ...
___________________________________________________________________
I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps
Author : cpeterso
Score : 569 points
Date : 2024-12-30 06:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| FredPret wrote:
| I've recently been toying with the idea of turning my overly
| complicated weightlifting Excel into an overly complicated me-
| only webapp / testflight app. It can't be worse than Excel for
| iOS!
| abound wrote:
| Self-plug: I wrote a not-too-overly complicated app for
| tracking my strength training (a 5/3/1 derivative)
|
| https://github.com/bcspragu/stronk
| hammock wrote:
| Nice. If you havent seen it, I use 531 calculator religiously
| and it has a ton of programs on it, and very customizable
| https://blackironbeast.com/5/3/1/calculator?
|
| Might inspire you as you continue to develop your app
| worthless-trash wrote:
| I use stronk (531 BBB) ! Its a damn small world!
|
| I exported most of my data from "Strong" into Stronk, was
| easy. Thanks !
|
| The interface showed lbs, but my values were all kg, still
| works.
| dcreater wrote:
| This is exactly what I've wanted to do for a long time. All the
| apps in the app store are money sucking or ad ridden and
| unnecessarily cluttered.
|
| I want a simple front end that lets me log lifts to a
| sheet/database
| httpsterio wrote:
| you could do an ios shortcut that fills a numbers sheet for
| you
| hackernewds wrote:
| get Claude to make an app and publish it as a PBA
| tmpz22 wrote:
| I've been jotting them down in a standardized format in apple
| notes and using a regex to parse them into structured json
| for later analysis.
|
| For all the apps that are supposed to make this easier none
| of them do it right.
| fudged71 wrote:
| I'm verrrry interested in your regex!! Can you share?
|
| I'm interested in building a fitness ontology/terminology
| linked to a tokenizer and parser.
| maxglute wrote:
| I'm doing something similar, incidentally in a wildly
| complicated google sheets + appscripts
|
| lot in google keep and copy paste, then sheet does rest
|
| https://imgur.com/a/xoHaxFY (3 images)
|
| notation is ColB, it'll generate relevant metrics, running
| total for some metrics like sets / INOL
|
| I also have onedit in sheet where if I put $$ anywhere it
| will calculate for the row
|
| if I have:
|
| ++5,10 it will generate warmups 5 reps jumps at 10%, back
| to 50%
|
| +++5,10 will do ramping warmups i.e. x5, x4, x3, x2, x1
|
| whatever last onedit row will also split up Rep PRs at top
|
| Most useful for me is auto cycle naming and visualization,
| i.e. the house keeping stuff that makes all the other apps
| finicky vs just logging on paper or note
|
| #### date = program name
|
| ### macrocycle (i.e. month)
|
| ## mesocycle (i.e. week)
|
| # microcycle (i.e. day)
|
| so it will auto generate something like
|
| #24/12/27
|
| #24/12/27[188/58] [3/2/4/4] [2D AGO] (0,4,4,3)
|
| 188th session / 58th session of this program (program 3,
| macro 3 / meso 4/ micro 4), done XYZ days ago. (0,4,4,3) is
| push, pull, legs, fatigue/recovery out of 5
|
| Visualization shows on/off days so you can get good
| timeline sense
|
| box border for mesocycles (week) with how many days at
| corner (useful for intuitive training)
|
| bars are volume (500lb increments) for varios tags (i.e. bp
| for all bench press variations)
|
| underline shows inol status for session (none, single under
| line, double underline, thick underline for >0.4, 1, 2, 2+
|
| it'll highlight extra good or bad sessions i.e. (5,4,0,3)
| was a very good push day
|
| Now mostly i goto gym, log in google keep:
|
| #YY/MM/DD (performance) comments
|
| ex1 (reps x sets) comments
|
| ex2 (reps x sets) comments
|
| ex3 (reps x sets) comments
|
| Copy and paste into sheet when I feel like it and review
| metrics graph when needed
| sandspar wrote:
| I use Google Forms to send data to a Google Sheet. You just
| put whatever lifts you have in the Form with spaces to add
| weights. I use this Google Form --> Google Sheets thing for a
| dozen different things.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| I do this same Google Form technique, and save the bookmark
| to my phone's home screen. So it's like having a dedicated
| app!
| tcandens wrote:
| This seems like a common predicament. I made this one mostly
| for myself and to try out VLCN sqlite sync.
| https://www.dumblift.com
| m-zuber wrote:
| I've been very impressed with hevy[0] so far
|
| [0] https://www.hevyapp.com/
| adlotsof wrote:
| I use https://www.liftosaur.com/ which allows for overly
| complicated stuff with its liftoscript DSL
| xnx wrote:
| Is Glide better than AppSheets?
| lurn_mor wrote:
| Easier, but more expensive in the long run.
| dvdsgl wrote:
| Our customers who've switched from AppSheet tell us
| emphatically "yes" because of Glide's ease of use, power, and
| the design of the apps it produces.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Let go of your complex solutions. Spreadsheets were the right
| answer all along.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I organize my life with spreadsheets and it works great.
| Running Spreadsheet, Health Spreadsheet, Investing Spreadsheet,
| Gardening Spreadsheet, on and on. :) It's just the best way to
| examine the data that is your life and have any hope of
| remembering the past and improve the future.
| genghisjahn wrote:
| I've kept my finances on a google sheet for well over a
| decade. And it was old excel before that.
| crabmusket wrote:
| I think the mobile form factor has something to say about that.
| I somewhat agree (reluctantly) for desktop usage, but
| spreadsheets are too complex to be ergonomic with small touch
| screens.
| larodi wrote:
| Yes, so was IBM/360 in text mode but someone wanted to draw
| nice buttons.
| bentcorner wrote:
| My wife had surgery last summer and had about 10 medications
| she needed to take immediately afterwards - each of them had
| their own period so I needed to know what we took, and what was
| "overdue" at any point in time.
|
| I whipped up a spreadsheet in google sheets and added a google
| form that allowed me to quickly pick a medication that was just
| taken - it'd enter it into the sheet and an "overview" page
| would show me what was pending, with color coding if something
| was "overdue".
|
| I felt like I was abusing what a spreadsheet was meant for but
| it worked quite well.
|
| If I knew about Glide I probably could have made it look even
| nicer.
| Neywiny wrote:
| Tbh sheets has gotten a lot better over the years. It's not hard
| to autofill and other things that used to be impossible or too
| obscure to figure out. I'll stick with the free platform for
| things just for me
| tekknolagi wrote:
| See also: retool
| dvdsgl wrote:
| Retool is great, although they explicitly build for developers
| and building on retool requires writing glue code in their
| JavaScript template language, and writing SQL queries.
|
| In Glide, we avoid code and syntax as much as possible. Our
| table-driven programming model also creates a nice MVC-like
| separation of concerns where you don't end up with your program
| chaotically interspersed with controls on a canvas, so your
| program is easier to manage as it scales (in exchange for being
| less direct to create).
| gunalx wrote:
| Why lock down to a nocode tool instead of just hacking together a
| simple html5 page?
|
| Ai assistants have speed up the prototype workflow for doing less
| code/design.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| Presumably so they can hook into an external datasource
| HaZeust wrote:
| so can a simple HTML5 page with a jquery script tag
| drekipus wrote:
| I've always heard of completely devoid out of touch
| developers but this is the first I've seen it so
| pronounced.
| superb_dev wrote:
| Did you skip web design 101? If it's simple enough, you
| can absolutely slap it together with jQuery and html.
| jay-barronville wrote:
| Time is a valuable resource. This doesn't simply boil
| down to one's abilities--for most of us, opportunity cost
| is an important factor. If I'm just trying to get some
| value out of some data, why waste time playing web
| developer, fighting CSS, dealing with CORS issues, etc.,
| when I could simply use an existing tool that already has
| my use case covered?
| superb_dev wrote:
| Why waste your time? Some of us are just in it for the
| love of the game
| jay-barronville wrote:
| Ha. You said exactly what was on my mind.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Yeah, I can't tell if some of these responses are serious
| or tongue in cheek.
| smarx007 wrote:
| The classic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
| HaZeust wrote:
| One day left for 2024 and snark is dead; hopefully it's
| revived in 2025!
| FlamingMoe wrote:
| True that Claude can generate a simple working prototype in a
| single prompt. But there's still the friction of deploying the
| app, making it accessible across devices, and easily managing
| updates. Which something like Glide streamlines for non-
| technical users.
| hackernewds wrote:
| publish it as a website and download it as a PWA
| franga2000 wrote:
| Even just "make it a PWA" can take an experienced frontend
| developer a day or more. The manifest needs to be _just
| right_ , the server might need to be reconfigured to serve
| the right MIME type, you need to generate a few mandatory
| icon sizes, you need a service worker even if you're not
| using it...
|
| If you're using a big framework like Vite, this is somewhat
| easier, but then it's not a "simple html file" anymore and
| you spend just as much time fiddling with framework stuff.
| reustle wrote:
| For those curious, you can also do some pretty fast
| prototyping (including deploy) with https://bolt.new and
| https://v0.dev (vercel). Sometimes even a single prompt.
| larodi wrote:
| Cause guy does not code perhaps? Otherwise siding with this
| comment thread. Claude indeed does super rapid html5 dev a
| child's play.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Why buy a bike when you can assemble one from parts?
| switch007 wrote:
| He kind of answered you in TFA:
|
| > I can feel some people reading this article demanding that I
| just learn Swift or some mobile-friendly JavaScript package and
| make some real apps, but I steadfastly refuse. I enjoy the
| messy middle of programming, where I have just enough app, API,
| and logic knowledge to make something small for my friends and
| family that's always accessible on this little computer I carry
| everywhere, but I have no ambitions to make it "real."
| Too wrote:
| An AI generated page will be full of security holes that a non
| programmer will be unable to assess.
|
| I'm not normally a fan of nocode but dude, get real, the target
| user for this will have zero chance of understanding and
| maintaining the output if it's in code. Compared to pick your
| column and choose the type of widget you want it represented
| as. Below the tip of that iceberg there are also lots of non
| trivial features like search and sync.
| rdiddly wrote:
| The hack quotient on this is high, so that's good, though
| ironically it's hacking around all the BS we put up with
| (languages, frameworks) to get a programming project up and
| running!
| e12e wrote:
| Opening Glide on my phone, I'm greeted with:
|
| > Open Glide on a large screen to build apps.
|
| I get it - but a little ironic that one can't get started with an
| existing sheet...
| dvdsgl wrote:
| Yes, we agree.
|
| We have a mobile experience in the works!
| https://glideapps.com/create
| est wrote:
| I keep changing the last part of Google spreadsheets URL from
| /edit to /preview
|
| Much better loading time.
| deweywsu wrote:
| Glide appears pretty cool, except that the next level up plan
| over the free one is $69 per month, more than a little steep for
| most personal users. I myself am wondering if there are any good
| projects out there that do similar things but that use either
| local databases or even browser storage?
| harikb wrote:
| I think the key value of Google sheets link is that you can do
| rest of your aggregation/data fixes on Google sheets. And data
| is in your control
|
| I made an app for a meetup/reunion, but 10 user limit meant
| everyone had to given a shared password
|
| Like you, I would happily pay for many many services about
| 10/month - right where streaming subscriptions are. But none of
| these companies seem to understand that part...
| pspeter3 wrote:
| I wish Google Sheets supported a REST API for their new tables
| feature so you could interact with them more like a database and
| less like a 2D array
| altbdoor wrote:
| You could more or less achieve this, by using a Google Apps
| Script that exposes the sheet. I found spreadapi to be good
| enough for basic use.
|
| https://github.com/ziolko/spreadapi
| pspeter3 wrote:
| This is great, thanks!
| dcre wrote:
| I use Notion databases for this. They're essentially spreadsheets
| with customizable table, list, kanban views, and each row gets
| its own wiki-style page in addition to the structured data. So
| it's nice for lists of books or movies or games, where you have
| some metadata but you also might want to take notes on it when
| you read/watch/play. It works pretty well for this purpose, but I
| also could probably make Obsidian or Logseq work and it would
| have a better privacy story, give me more control over the shape
| of the data, and not cost $48 a year (though I don't really mind
| paying).
|
| https://www.notion.com/help/intro-to-databases
|
| I have been looking for a way to switch from Notion since they
| rolled out AI features without an opt-out (besides emailing
| them). I don't even dislike LLMs, I just want to know what I'm
| sending them and when.
| pjot wrote:
| A little know Google product is called Tables[0]. Very similar
| to what you're describing.
|
| Another is AppSheet[1] for a more drag and drop application
| builder.
|
| [0]: https://tables.area120.google.com/
|
| [1]: https://about.appsheet.com/home/
| edoceo wrote:
| From the Tables page:
|
| Important update: The Beta program is now closed Tables is no
| longer accepting new users for its Beta program
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Also,
|
| > Table's features and capabilities are now integrated into
| AppSheet, our no-code platform that blah blah blah
|
| Seems like a usual Google product in that if you use it,
| you'll be forced to migrate all your data/workflows to some
| shiny new thing every few years.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| I badly, badly wish Obsidian had some kind of
| database/spreadsheet feature. I'm limping along with
| LibreOffice spreadsheets for privacy, but it's a pain having my
| notes in two different formats. And I miss grep.
| alostpuppy wrote:
| What would you use this feature for?
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Basically what parent said, little personal database
| tables. Example: I have a list of 100 movies I want to see,
| and I have columns like date watched, year released, should
| I rewatch again in 10 years, notes, etc. I want to be able
| to do two things:
|
| 1. Sort/filter by columns (ex: status = not watched)
|
| 2. Add markdown like "[[Steve]] told me to watch this" and
| have backlinks etc. work seamlessly with the rest of my
| notes.
|
| I know you can do that with Obsidian "properties" but I
| don't want 100 separate files for my to-watch list.
|
| And I've tried a few of the Obsidian database plugins too,
| but as far as keyboard usability none of them came close to
| VisiData or LibreOffice.
| jddj wrote:
| I think this all works out of the box with logseq.
|
| You can create a movie template with a few props then put
| them anywhere and then tabularise all the entries with a
| query.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| Try SiYuan Note. It was posted here a couple of days ago.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| You should check out Fibery. It's ultimately like Notion but a
| lot more performant and less "finicky" due to being too clever
| about UX, in my opinion.
| dcre wrote:
| Definitely interesting. I think if I was going to put in the
| effort of switching, it would probably be to more of a labor
| of love pain in the ass situation like Obsidian where I can
| be more in control.
|
| My use case would easily fit into the Fibery free plan.
| Amusingly, their own comparison page argues that Notion is a
| better fit for me:
|
| "Where Fibery works better?
|
| Processes and work management for medium and large teams.
| Complex processes like product management, feedback
| management, user research, software development tracking.
|
| Where Notion works better?
|
| Personal life organizer. Small/medium company wiki. Work
| management for teams with simple processes."
|
| https://fibery.io/fibery-vs-x
| llamaimperative wrote:
| I'm a heavy Obsidian user personally, started using Fibery
| for my startup, and now I'm starting to use Fibery for
| personal stuff over Obsidian as well.
|
| Obsidian is a better note-taker, but Fibery is much more
| programmable and has the most important OOTB feature of
| Obsidian which is bidirectional linking (IMO).
|
| I don't think Fibery gives you less control except in the
| sense of like data ownership (which is what brought me to
| Obsidian back in the day).
|
| More key bindings for Fibery would also be appreciated :)
| dcre wrote:
| Funny about backlinks -- Notion has had them since 2020
| and I've never once looked at the backlinks for a given
| page. I don't think any of my pages link to each other.
| freetonik wrote:
| I was commissioned to make a video explaining what Fivery is
| and what makes it powerful. It was a couple of years ago, but
| I believe the core principles still stand. In case someone is
| interested to learn more and is ok with video format, check
| it out: https://youtu.be/ddgJGoQBdtQ
|
| I think Fibery is a very interesting product and an
| incredibly powerful platform. Developed by a small team.
| wim wrote:
| We're building Thymer [1] for this, which is end-to-end
| encrypted, offline-first and optionally self-hostable. It's
| like an editor but you can organize anything into custom
| database views, we hope to get it ready soon.
|
| [1] https://thymer.com/
| dcre wrote:
| Very cool! Will be keeping an eye out for it.
| larodi wrote:
| Basically: Guy reinvents MS Access on Google sheets 40 years
| later.
|
| Disclaim: this is not to say Access is to be despised of or
| anything. People found its utility for many years and the fact it
| is not what Boyce/Codd suggested they do with their tables, does
| not make it irrelevant. There was an article about how it just
| refuses to die and why. Worth reading for everyone interested in
| computer and computing history.
| anyfactor wrote:
| I've built quite a few dashboards while working on proof-of-
| concept feature/product engineering. Even though people often
| think I'm joking, almost always the backend database was a Google
| Sheet. Google Sheets has great API support, easy to write
| functionality, convenient read and file dumps, works well with
| Pandas/SQL, and has a universally appreciated UX. Data validation
| can be annoying if the "admin" directly enters data, but for
| building a proof of concept, nothing beats Google Sheets. The
| data from Google Sheets would be passed through an API to a web
| UI/dashboard. The dashboard I built for end users was a simple
| Bootstrap (Vue-Bootstrap) table from the API, with enough easy-
| to-use filters and views to work out of the box. If the data was
| too large, I would use a templated snippet to convert the JSON
| into a card view. Ignoring long-term maintainability, this was
| one of the most foolproof ways to build dashboards. After that,
| I'd slap Firebase Auth on top, and that was it.
|
| I haven't worked on these types of projects for nearly two years
| now. Folks I know use Retool or Softr with an API connectivity
| platform like Portable, Pipedream, or Zapier. If you're staring
| at a spreadsheet on a daily basis, the next step should be
| looking into an app builder combined with an API connection
| platform.
| mettamage wrote:
| Love it. I think my prototyping capabilities just extended by
| this comment
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Currently I manage my startup's accounting in Google sheet, and
| your comment gave me an idea to enhance it with Google Forms!
| ezst wrote:
| That... Sounds scary.
| ska wrote:
| Clunky, but should be ok assuming a) a pretty simple
| structure and cashflow b) properly implemented double-
| entry, and c) backups.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Accounting in a spreadsheet is scary?
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| hey we do the same thing lol, google sheets is great and
| sometimes if I have or want more I can just simply use
| pocketbase for easy solution
|
| these 2 tools is great for easy/fast prototype various project
| and honestly its kinda hard to replace
| smusamashah wrote:
| Monzo (online bank in UK) let you see all your transactions in
| a Google sheet (with some caveats e.g. interest earned is
| skipped). I wanted to make a total wealth chart over all years.
|
| It's so damn complicated in Google sheets. In MS Excel I could
| simply make a pivot chart, apply any aggregation on days/weeks
| and be done with it. But with Sheets I had to make a new
| aggregate column, filter data in another new column, and make a
| chart on that.
|
| Your comment does explain that API is why they export to sheets
| and not excel but Google sheets is way behind in ease of use.
| BillinghamJ wrote:
| Google Sheets can do that - https://officewheel.com/group-
| dates-in-pivot-table-google-sh...
| miki123211 wrote:
| My bank just exports to CSV, which is trivially importable to
| Excel, Sheets, Pandas or whatever else you need.
| maxique wrote:
| As I understand it, the appeal of Monzo's way is it's live
| updating rather than having to log in to some horribly
| outdated online banking portal and manually export
| homebrewer wrote:
| You're fine with Google seeing complete information about
| your income and spending? I'm not one of those truly
| paranoid, but this seems like a bit too much.
| diggan wrote:
| That seems like the least "compromising" data, compared to
| other things we let them get.
|
| Imagine there are whole countries out there where income is
| public and accessible to anyone ;)
| pxeger1 wrote:
| What's your risk model here? Google are not manually or
| automatically inspecting the contents of your spreadsheets
| in order to profile you and show you better-personalised
| ads. Not enough people have such a spreadsheet for it to be
| worth it for them, I'm sure - and they also probably
| already know approximately how wealthy you are. Unless
| you're under investigation for fraud or something, I doubt
| the government could get much use out of being able to
| access your financial spreadsheets via Google compared to
| the information they already get directly from banks etc.
| So that only really leaves criminals (for whom I still
| can't see a great incentive to read your spreadsheets), and
| I also don't really think your Google account is much less
| secure than your computer's local storage (if that's the
| other place you would keep it)
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| We've learned over and over that tech companies do things
| which seemingly make no sense to us, but do to them. Not
| being able to imagine it is not sufficient. Nothing is
| deleted anymore as well, in hopes it will be useful
| later.
|
| That said I don't see a huge risk here, unless combined
| with lots of other data. Would probably avoid though.
| cootsnuck wrote:
| I hope you don't use Gmail if that's your attitude lol.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I only care about humans seeing my data.
|
| Most big tech companies very rarely/never let a human
| review private customer data. Therefore I'm fine handing
| all the data over to big tech companies.
|
| I don't really understand any other point of view - if
| you're worried about a _machine_ seeing your private stuff,
| why did you type it into a keyboard in the first place?
| remus wrote:
| > if you're worried about a machine seeing your private
| stuff, why did you type it into a keyboard in the first
| place?
|
| Who owns that machine is important though. I don't mind
| putting my card details in via my phone to buy something
| because there's a level of trust in the whole system
| (it's my phone, I have a level of trust that google is
| not going to steal my card details via android, and a
| level of trust that the shop is legit and will process my
| order.)
|
| If some random person off the street asked me to type my
| card details into their phone that's a very different
| ball game as I don't inherently trust them.
| briandear wrote:
| I don't care that much about card details. If I see a
| fraudulent transaction, I dispute it and it's done. But
| my personal financial details/etc -- that's much
| different than a payment mechanism.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Most big tech companies very rarely /never let a human
| review private customer data. Therefore I'm fine handing
| all the data over to big tech companies._
|
| This isn't true. Google and Apple and others turn over
| user data to human analysts at NSA and FBI and others
| _without search warrants_ all of the time, on hundreds of
| thousands of user accounts per year.
|
| To be fine handing all the data over to big tech
| companies, you have to be fine handing all of the data
| over to US federal cops and intelligence services, too,
| because that's what giving the data (in non-e2ee form) to
| big tech means.
| martyvis wrote:
| Actually I have heard the exact opposite of what you are
| stating is true. Both Google and Apple fight very hard to
| avoid handing data to authorities. They don't want to be
| seen as some sort of easy conduit to government
| surveillance or shill. How does that benefit their
| reputation? I know of one case where Google spent
| millions on lawyers fighting government wanting access to
| an activist's email. Their FAQ here makes their policy
| pretty clear. https://support.google.com/transparencyrepo
| rt/answer/9713961...
| sneak wrote:
| Apple's own transparency report indicates they turn over
| data to the USG for over 100,000 different apple IDs each
| year in the no-warrant-or-probable-cause (FISA orders and
| NSLs) category.
|
| (Mind you; this includes device location histories due to
| geoip logs, unique identifiers, iMessage histories,
| photos, documents, everything.)
|
| The cases they are allowed to tell you about aren't in
| this category. They aren't even allowed to say exactly
| how many of the secret warrantless orders they received,
| or exactly how many users were affectee, only 500-count
| ranges.
|
| For just Apple, for just January 2023 to June 2023 (six
| months):
|
| National Security - FISA Non-Content Requests
|
| Table for National Security - FISA Non-Content Requests
| Data
|
| Requests Received 0 - 499
|
| Users/Accounts 40,500 - 40,999
|
| National Security - FISA Content Requests
|
| Table displaying National Security - FISA Content
| Requests
|
| Requests Received 500 - 999
|
| Users/Accounts 50,500 - 50,999
|
| National Security Letter Requests
|
| Table for National Security Letter Requests data
|
| Requests Received 0 - 499
|
| Users/Accounts 1,000 - 1,499
|
| National Security Letters where Non-disclosure Order
| Lifted
|
| 0
|
| I encourage you to read it for yourself:
|
| https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html
| imchillyb wrote:
| > ...no-warrant-or-probable-cause (FISA orders and
| NSLs)...
|
| These are not equivalents, nor are they similar. FISA =
| Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court / NSL = National
| Security Letter.
|
| If a person is the target of the FISA system, there most
| certainly is probable cause.
|
| National Security Letter is a gag order, given by the
| intelligence community, in order to protect national
| security.
|
| Again, if you or your organization receives one of these,
| there most certainly is probable cause.
|
| These systems may be detestable, but there's no need to
| make things up.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Apple's own transparency report indicates they turn
| over data to the USG for over 100,000 different apple IDs
| each year in the no-warrant-or-probable-cause (FISA
| orders and NSLs) category.
|
| FISA "orders" are warrants and have the same requirement
| for probable cause as any search or seizure warrant (they
| aren't criminal warrants so the probable cause is not of
| there being evidence of a crime, but of the target being
| an agent of a foreign power.)
|
| NSLs are administrative subpoenas accompanied with gag
| orders, not warrants, and correspondingly do not have a
| probable cause requirement; unlike warrants (and like
| other subpoenas), they are subject to precompliance
| challenge (and the associated gag order is challengable
| separately.)
| flokie wrote:
| What about just plain old query() SQL i usually find the
| easiest vs. mucking around with pivot tables.
| Closi wrote:
| SQL is fine if you don't want to play with the data
| interactively - but that's the real benefit of Pivot
| Tables.
|
| Things like drilling through, filtering/slicing, and then
| generating a graph, all in SaaS without having to run
| anything local.
| OxfordOutlander wrote:
| +1 for googlesheets. It is stable, and provided you don't
| exceed the API limits, you can run a lot of data through it.
| Appscript is also incredibly powerful if you work with tools
| that have decent APIs. With a few lines of js and the built in
| trigger functions, you can have an automatically updating
| dashboard with email notifications when certain conditions are
| met (e.g. balance too low, user engagement metric does X etc).
| specproc wrote:
| The article mentions appsheets, which I absolutely loved in my
| last role.
|
| Brilliant for knocking up very simple internal tooling off the
| back of a Google Sheet. Most importantly, there was zero
| fucking around with IT on it, as it was already included in our
| workspace package.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Firebase auth? Would it be possible for a savvy end user to
| replicate your API calls to Google Sheets directly to bypass
| the auth?
| ramzis wrote:
| > for building a proof of concept, nothing beats Google Sheets
|
| Supabase is free and checks all the boxes in addition to having
| auth, vector search, logs, security, and not being ... Google
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Slightly off-topic.
|
| In small business accounting, I have a persistent need for a
| FileMaker Pro like solution for invoices. FMP was conscious of
| on-screen layout and print.
|
| ReTool has been recommended as similar replacement for FMP but
| they don't have the idea of creating print-ready documented
| receipts and invoices. You don't even need to print it, you
| just need to keep it for the IRS.
|
| I love the idea of using Google Sheets and turnkey app building
| apps. But I still need documentation.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| There's gotta be a ton of solutions for sale for small
| business accounting, no? Among them FileMaker pro?
| ezst wrote:
| If I want a database set up in minutes just to focus on the
| business side and nothing else, I simply fire up a new Django
| project (I suspect any other framework with an ORM and auto-
| generated CRUD UIs would be equally competent for that).
|
| I have nothing against Google Sheets, I really haven't put much
| thought into it in this context, but I would need some
| convincing that it's a better and easier way to kick things
| off.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| That Django project needs a host to run on, even if it's just
| your local machine.
|
| If you want others to interact with it, you need to expose it
| to the internet through some means and think through the
| security implications of doing so.
|
| The Google Sheets approach doesn't need you to manage a
| process or web server. It is instantly shareable while
| letting Google worry about security, performance,
| availability, etc.
|
| The specifics of the "what's better?" ratio can shift
| depending on comfort level / experience with either product,
| or what infrastructure you may already have available to
| deploy to. But building on top of GApps does mean you get a
| lot of useful aspects "free".
| ezst wrote:
| Thanks, that's a valid point. I have never thought of
| publishing a PoC web app as more than pushing some files on
| a server and editing a config file, but now I see how not
| everyone can be familiar with that.
| liontwist wrote:
| I like to just start with a SQLite UI editor.
|
| You can just query a database and work with the results
| directly . In a dynamic language like python there is little
| advantage to loading rows into classes. That Django query
| language is so painful and opaque.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| Back in 2010, I was in a work meeting making small talk and we
| were discussing how cringe some advertising is nowadays. One of
| us, a program manager who was ~15 years my senior told me it's
| because we're not the target demographic and that millennials
| are targeted differently, mainly through word-of-mouth and
| generally Guerrilla marketing tactics.
|
| Whenever I see articles like these and comments like yours, I
| can't stop thinking about that meeting.
|
| Edit: to clarify, I am not accusing you of anything. But I do
| suspect the article to be part of a Google marketing campaign.
| mosburger wrote:
| I wonder if anyone has ever made an ORM adapter that works with
| Google Sheets as its "Database"?
| zem wrote:
| I've built a scrabble tournament management app on google
| sheets, because it was the easiest way I could think of to let
| multiple people edit it with all the others seeing live
| updates. From a developer's point of view it kind of sucks,
| having to maintain everything in one large javascript file and
| having to use spreadsheet tabs as input and output, not to
| mention manually attaching the script to a new sheet for every
| tournament. But the user experience has been excellent, modulo
| a few permissions glitches.
|
| I'm still trying to rewrite it as a self hosted web app this
| year because the aforementioned permissions glitches and the
| difficulty of doing versioned deployments has made me reluctant
| to continue relying on google, but overall sheets has been a
| huge boon and we have gotten years of use out of it.
| fijiaarone wrote:
| Nice ad
| zie wrote:
| I tried going all on on Google Sheets earlier this year. I used
| the Python API and like almost nothing worked consistently.
|
| I got 1 sheet to work well with like 1k rows and thought woohoo
| this is great! So I went all-in, put 25k rows in and Google
| pooped the bed. It gave errors all the time, rows and columns
| were funky. API issues galore.
|
| SQLite however handled 25k rows without any errors, always rock
| solid.
|
| I gave up. Overall a terrible experience once I got past 1k rows.
| I'm glad it's worked well for you.
|
| I only had like 10 columns, so it wasn't like massive amounts of
| data. I was linking to a file out in Google Drive and that was
| where most of my issues were. Google drive's API was 99.99%
| completely useless.
|
| My takeaway from the experience was, Google proclaims they have
| an API, but it seems more like nobody tests it or cares about it.
| Perhaps it's malicious compliance, they have it because they have
| to have an API, but not because they expect anyone to actually
| use it.
|
| Perhaps I'm just not cool enough for Google.
| anyfactor wrote:
| The projects I worked on always had a mechanism to dump data
| into a proper database. For example, I built a daily scraper to
| collect some of the inventory. I didn't keep all the data in a
| single sheet. Instead, all the data was stored in a cloud-based
| managed SQLite or PostgreSQL database, or sometimes a local
| SQLite database. Only the day's data was stored in Google
| Sheets because the client wanted to see the spreadsheet
| themselves and have the UI be accessible for their users.
| matharmin wrote:
| It feels a little misleading to say you're using Google
| Sheets as the backend database, when you need an actual
| database in conjunction with it.
| mattigames wrote:
| Extremely misleading, in this case Google Sheets it's
| working more like a frontend
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Thank you for discussing this openly, it can be a real bummer
| to write something, test it, have something work up to a point
| then fail due to situations outside your control.
|
| You probably just saved me about 20 hours of coding.
| fragmede wrote:
| to be fair, 25k rows seems like a few more rows than I'd use
| a spreadsheet for
| benatkin wrote:
| Did the commenter say that it was being edited
| concurrently? Because that's the only circumstance in which
| it would really be acceptable for it to break like that.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Wait till you hear about the spreadsheets researchers
| use... My chemist friend uses Excel files that regularly
| exceed 2GB of just text...
| levocardia wrote:
| which is an awful idea because some versions of Excel
| will, if you open a file with more than 1million rows (or
| ~16k columns), automatically truncate _and delete_ the
| excess data! And don 't even get me started on automatic
| date conversion.
| anthk wrote:
| Computer illiteracy and shitty platforms (MSOffice is not
| apt for science at all) costs Scientists biliions on
| broken research:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02211-4?error=
| coo...
| terribleperson wrote:
| Unreasonably large spreadsheets are surprisingly common.
| Excel 2007's row limit was 65536, and nowadays it's over a
| million. Spreadsheets actually get that big, too.
| lpapez wrote:
| An app I worked on once wanted a Google Sheets
| Integration - just a quick button to import rows from the
| database and into the spreadsheet so that the client can
| do some quick visualization and pie charts (I offered
| them a readonly DB account but they didn't know any SQL).
|
| Few years have passed, and there are currently 470
| THOUSAND rows with 20+ columns in that spreadsheet which
| is used almost daily.
|
| Rewriting this into a proper web app would take maybe a
| week (the API is already there and used by GS), but was
| never deemed a priority, so it will keep existing in the
| backlog until we hit row or cell limits - after which it
| will suddenly become urgent...
| javier2 wrote:
| Is 25k a lot? I regularly make google sheets with 400k
| rows, but those are manual csv dumps from a real database
| that I just import
| neeleshs wrote:
| I have had a similar experience with their API. Very verbose
| json structure, lack of stable row IDs, inconsistent data
| types. And being a spreadsheet, it also has to have
| styling/formatting details, complicating it even more.
| hliyan wrote:
| If you have more than a few thousand records, this is the wrong
| tool for the job. I've used Google Sheets as a "database" for a
| few applications in the past. In each case, it was an internal
| tool that did not generate more than a few thousand records, if
| that.
| p2detar wrote:
| A few thousand like the product of rows*cols? Just curious.
| baobun wrote:
| records = rows
| layer8 wrote:
| Even text files (like CSV) are fine for the amount of data
| the OP has trouble with, and Excel certainly is, so it's
| unclear why Google Sheets should already balk on that. Google
| Sheets has a limit of 10 million cells per sheet (so for
| 25000 rows that would be 400 columns), and really shouldn't
| be running into errors for sheets below that limit.
| diggan wrote:
| > If you have more than a few thousand records, this is the
| wrong tool for the job.
|
| Just to be precise, Google Sheets might be the wrong tool for
| the job. Other spreadsheet applications can handle "more than
| a few thousand records" easily, seems this is a Google Sheets
| specific issue.
| mattigames wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if it's not fixed on purpose, they
| do have cloud DB offering and all that overpriced jazz to
| sell you.
| baobun wrote:
| Can also be a feature to cap the potential scale for a PoC
| you want to keep from getting productized as-is.
| lovasoa wrote:
| Starting with a Google Sheet is perfectly fine, but for
| building a non tabular user interface, or having a few thousand
| records, I would directly switch to something like SQLPage with
| a SQLite database.
| bambax wrote:
| There are extensions that let you query Excel worksheet files
| directly from SQLite (no importing, no transformation, just
| direct query). It's quite fun to do; you can use Excel (or
| Libre office, etc.) to maintain the spreadsheet, and build
| reports with SQLite.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| Could you mention a few of such, to save time going through
| search results?
| bambax wrote:
| The one I use is xlite
|
| https://github.com/x2bool/xlite
|
| It's read-only and mounts spreadsheets as virtual tables.
| Very fast.
|
| Perhaps more relevant to this thread, libgsqlite loads
| Google Sheets as virtual tables:
|
| https://github.com/0x6b/libgsqlite
|
| (I haven't tested it though.)
| dvdsgl wrote:
| Hello! Founder of Glide FTA.
|
| Yes, many of our customers hit the issues you mentioned as they
| scale spreadsheet-based applications. We built Big Tables for
| this case: https://www.glideapps.com/big-tables
|
| You keep most of the convenience and programmability of a
| spreadsheet, but you get Postgres scale and a first-class API
| (which includes atomic table swapping for updating large
| datasets). It also supports live updating of any views
| displaying that data.
| causal wrote:
| Thank you for also having Airtable support, which I vastly
| prefer over Google Sheets for any kind of API work
| bewal416 wrote:
| We built an entire app for our golf league- all using Glide and
| Google Sheets.
|
| It was honestly a great experience- all the players had a great
| mobile experience with obvious forms and leaderboards, while the
| storage and compute was hidden inside the Google Sheet. The
| pricing was pretty reasonable- considering we could split the
| bill among us all, and we only needed it for about 4 months.
|
| There's still hope for good, quality SaaS! However, I hope Glide
| (or another) can figure out the pricing for the hobbyist tier.
| ijidak wrote:
| I'm looking for a no code platform that I can use for my
| customers and charge a subscription for access.
|
| Most of these no-code solutions target internal company
| Intranets.
|
| But, I want to use them for apps I can sell to customers.
|
| Does anyone have recommendations?
| BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote:
| I am also interested in this.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| As mentioned by another poster, check out "Partner portals"
| section on https://retool.com/
| ShaggyHotDog wrote:
| Google sheet on mobile is pain. Good idea on how this becomes
| usable. Will try it.
| santa_boy wrote:
| Glide is cool ... I wish there were FOSS versions of Glide to
| spin up nice, neat and simple mobile apps.
|
| There are now quite a few reliable FOSS version of no-code tools
| (but the mobile space seems to be missing alternatives). Few nice
| no-code FOSS that I love using are listed at
| https://blog.n0c0de.com/articles/1635ef6f-f616-8023-b336-ff3...
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| This is great, thanks for sharing!
| dvdsgl wrote:
| Thank you!
| zuhayeer wrote:
| Love this, big fan of Glide. We've used Google Sheets for a long
| time to power Levels.fyi and allowed us to move fast without too
| much of a formal backend. Check out our post here:
| https://www.levels.fyi/blog/scaling-to-millions-with-google-...
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| I really like the part where the article was phone friendly.
|
| Seriously how does anyone make money with a website where the
| actual content is so obscured by ads that users don't bother
| coming back?
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| I haven't used online spreadsheets as databases and I guess they
| are good for prototyping, rapid application development and in-
| house testing.
| epolanski wrote:
| OT but I convinced several of my clients to use Excel and
| SharePoint they already had in their bundle over writing a full
| blown app multiple times, added some automation and it was both
| cheaper and made them happier.
| rashidae wrote:
| During COVID, I built a quick no-code solution to help 'all-
| inclusive resorts' in Cancun and Punta Cana. It started with
| guests scanning a QR code, filling out a short form, and
| scheduling their Antigen/PCR tests. Over time, it evolved to help
| nurses manage operations, streamline test results, and send
| certificates via email.
|
| What began as a DIY project during lockdown scaled quickly to
| Mexico City, the Dominican Republic, and Barcelona, processing
| over 30,000 tests the day after New Year's Eve. Using Airtable,
| an Airtable extension called miniextensions.com, and tools like
| Docusign, Make, Sendgrid, and Twilio, the solution ended up
| supporting over 1 million tests. I handled all technical aspects,
| support, and training myself.
|
| Since the solution was meant to be temporary, I prioritized speed
| and reliability. Airtable's relational database capabilities were
| crucial, especially compared to spreadsheets, for managing
| multiple linked tables and automations. Airtable also offers a
| REST API and a pretty amazing self- actualizing database schema
| that can be copied into tools like GPT or Claude for added
| context. You can build powerful tools with its scripts,
| interfaces, and automations.
|
| That said, Airtable is best for use cases with fewer than 250,000
| records per month. Above 100,000 records, the web platform's
| performance can suffer, though there are workarounds. It's
| perfect for small to medium-sized businesses needing custom API
| integrations for CRMs or internal tools.
|
| If you're interested, I wrote a brief case study about the
| project here: https://rashidazarang.com/covid-testing.
|
| On a related note, today I built a cool Airtable automation using
| ChatGPT and custom scripts. By filling out a corporate email in a
| form, the system scrapes the web for details like company name,
| address, phone, fax, and more, which then populates the CRM
| automatically. I'm still experimenting and plan to make a YouTube
| video about it soon. Here's the loom video I sent to a friend
| about it:
| https://www.loom.com/share/b9ddbefbdce5434da378667fc2079d00?...
| panosfilianos wrote:
| woah!
|
| didn't even know you can embed videos on HN!
| starquake wrote:
| I think your browser is doing some embedding cause I don't
| see an embedded video...
| mattfrommars wrote:
| This is great and I look forward to your YouTube video. It is
| intriguing to me since you went you choose existing tool and
| piped the entire workflow vs to build the entire thing from
| scratch in Python, for example.
|
| In the demo Loom video, the part where you are scheduling an
| appointment, it looks very calendly like but it is not. Did you
| build the entire UI and UX yourself?
| causal wrote:
| +1 for Airtable API. Way ahead of Google Sheets IMO.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| This is very impressive considering the real-world complexities
| surrounding it, but you've taken that complexity and turned it
| into a fairly simple work-flow with minimal coding. I've been
| developing software professionally for nearly 20 years and I
| find these kinds of projects to be fascinating. I started out
| my career with a mixture of coding and non-coding
| "integrations" (hacks) with other software. Over the years I've
| fallen in the typical "how can I build this from scratch" trap,
| but in many cases - as you've proven - that's not always the
| best decision. Kudos and thanks for sharing!
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| > ... the day after New Year's Eve.
|
| OT nitpick, but isn't this "New Year's Day?" Or did you mean
| January 2nd?
| ozim wrote:
| _app-based delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats were not
| the best way to support local businesses_
|
| Unfortunately I got pissed off badly because I found out that
| ordering directly I was treated like a second class customer -
| where I expected the opposite.
|
| If I order directly they know I will not leave negative reviews.
|
| I really wanted to pay directly for the same service. I wasn't
| expecting to get better service and definitely I wasn't expecting
| being treated like dirt.
|
| So sorry but I will keep using app ordering services because I
| simply get better quality of food and better delivery times.
| dools wrote:
| I used google sheets but wouldn't go past big query or firebase
| these days. You can have connected sheets that read straight from
| big query and probably firebase too, and they're so much better
| and faster and have fewer quirks than sheets
| d--b wrote:
| Is that an ad? It definitely sounds like one.
| switch007 wrote:
| Definitely an ad.
| Too wrote:
| Either that, or the author has a really odd fixation that
| warrants spending $69/month, just to share a list of nearby
| restaurants with his wife?
| switch007 wrote:
| That's definitely it !
| dvdsgl wrote:
| Founder of Glide (YC W19) here. This article surprised us and
| is not paid.
| tym83 wrote:
| Tried to use Glide a few years ago and couldn't understand why it
| is needed anyway in real life? It seems like toy for startup-
| guys, not for real MVP's or something valuable.
|
| I like Google Sheets and Google Docs but this app is so strange.
| Maybe it's ok for small "homemade" projects for neighbourhoods or
| local businesses like flower salon or fitness club. But why it is
| needed for these type of business if we have social media,
| messengers, WPA and adaptive layouts on websites.
| dvdsgl wrote:
| We've made a lot of progress in a few years! Check again?
| lwhi wrote:
| This is giving me flashbacks to the days when MS Access (and
| later on Visual Basic) ruled this segment of the market.
|
| It's interesting to think there's still a market for this type of
| small scale enthusiast application.
|
| One scenarios I've been thinking about recently is the death of
| the generic app.
|
| If LLMs end up being able to create software easily, why wouldn't
| we choose to have software that's totally aligned our specific
| needs?
| ajcp wrote:
| Not just totally aligned, but also "just-in-time" and
| ephemeral: an LLM goes and does/builds it on request, and then
| destroys all artifacts when the request has been fulfilled?
|
| If the persistence of something incurs a cost in storage and
| security, and the traditional penalties of efficiency and
| learning-curves are removed, why not recreate it every time its
| needed?
| Raed667 wrote:
| I wanted to use Google Sheets for an internal corporate app, but
| authentication/authorization is a pain, I got it to work but it
| would have probably been faster to just have some CRUD SQLITE
| somewhere.
| dvdsgl wrote:
| Glide (from the article) adds simple pin-based auth and access
| control on top of the spreadsheet data. There's also user and
| role-based data protection.
| anoncow wrote:
| Looks like a wonderful New Years Eve project
| animal531 wrote:
| I used to work on some really complicated old code for a long
| term incentive management company where each client had a ton of
| their own rules, but once those were set up they would be running
| fine for 3 or 5 year cycles without any issues. The difficult
| part was to fit their requirements and rules into our code.
|
| At some point I started working on a new version that would just
| run with a spreadsheet as the frontend where the business analyst
| could add whatever rules and calculation fields they wanted,
| which would then link to some input of users, share values,
| periods etc.
|
| It was going quite well and seemed extremely viable but
| unfortunately the business died due to some other issues along
| with Covid before the software saw the light of day.
| dvdsgl wrote:
| Founder of Glide (YC W19) mentioned in the article -- thanks for
| the recognition. This was not an ad from us, we were surprised by
| the coverage.
|
| Glide's customers are businesses building software for internal
| use. During YC we called these "dark apps" but since then we call
| them "apps for work." We wanted something usable by IT and
| operations staff (not developers) that emphasized design and UX.
|
| Glide started as a simple spreadsheet-to-PWA trick but is now a
| complete programming model and runtime platform for data-driven
| business apps, including APIs, databases, responsive layouts, a
| managed AI system, and workflow automations.
|
| One of our Crown Jewels is our data editor, where you program
| your app with our reactive computed columns. Our data grid has
| become a popular open source component:
| https://grid.glideapps.com/
|
| You can also try our new AI-native builder experience, where
| we're trying to simplify building even further. It's very early
| but just shows our continued effort to make building software
| simpler: https://glideapps.com/create
|
| Thanks again!
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| I remember when you launched your product on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19163081
|
| I favorited it back then. Glad to see it's doing well, it looks
| like a cool product. I haven't found a reason to use it yet but
| that's also because I have slowed down on coding personal
| projects after work in general.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Glide was cool when it launched but they never made that
| product work. Right now they have moved to an agency model
| and that is their product.
| dvdsgl wrote:
| This is not true. We don't build apps for customers,
| although there are Glide agencies that we match customers
| with. We've learned that some businesses prefer to pay for
| someone else to build for them no matter the platform, so
| we're happy to facilitate that given our agency ecosystem.
| rashidae wrote:
| I haven't used Glide yet, but I've worked extensively with
| other 'front-end interfaces for Airtable and Spreadsheets',
| like Softr, Noloco and Bubble.
|
| The first time I tried Glide, I struggled with the interface,
| and unfortunately, support didn't respond to my messages, so I
| had to take a different direction.
|
| That said, I'd love to give Glide a try. It's incredible that
| we have direct access to founders like you here on HN.
|
| Congrats on your success! From your perspective, where do you
| see no-code and low-code heading, especially with AI
| dramatically lowering the barriers to coding?
| dvdsgl wrote:
| Thank you! Please let me know how your second attempt goes.
|
| AI and no code platforms will merge into new high-level
| software creation tools. We already view Glide as a hybrid--
| try our AI component for the bottoms-up view. Our top-down AI
| approach will soon be live in our onboarding.
| ta988 wrote:
| I know a few people who started to use glide for personal apps
| and were put off by the price. ($200/mo for over 3 personal
| apps is a bit tough).
|
| They showed me what they were doing and that was absolutely
| incredible for people without programming experience. They
| integrated with spreadsheets and llms and their PDF collections
| of manuals for devices etc.
|
| But as lower-income people they were stopped in their tracks
| and I found that really sad that there isn't an option for non
| money-making or business supporting applications. In their case
| they were all doing that for their hobbies or for supporting
| their aging parents and giving them tools to handle their
| tasks, chores and care.
| drewbeck wrote:
| I've had the same experience. I really want something of this
| quality that is accessible to hobbyists or folks managing non
| revenue generating things -- any kind of social organization
| could really benefit!
| deweywsu wrote:
| I second this. I'm guessing you're limiting access at a lower
| price point because you're worried too many business
| customers will opt for the lower cost plan when they should
| be on the higher priced one? I would pay somewhere in the
| neighborhood of $10/mo or so for a personal plan that had
| more than your free tier and less than the business one.
| dvdsgl wrote:
| Yes, I'm also sad we couldn't find a way to be affordable
| for everyone while also growing our business. We've learned
| that the personal/community app 'market' is impossible to
| grow upon, and that pricing for this group undercuts your
| pricing power with businesses.
| donohoe wrote:
| Its been real easy to build small and large web apps for news
| organization on Google Sheets. Most recently we built an "AI
| Election Tracker" for 2024 elections across the globe
|
| https://restofworld.org/2024/elections-ai-tracker/
|
| GS is not the best editorial interface but its not bad either,
| especially when it allows you to get things done quickly.
|
| Likewise, this was another fun project (since retired) that sits
| on Google Sheets:
|
| https://restofworld.org/stat-of-the-day/
|
| We skip Google's API which I really dislike. The sheets are set
| to publish to the web and you can use that to pull down the data
| and parse it into JSON files.
|
| It take less than a minute to set the basics up now.
| yx827ha wrote:
| Why does the site hijack the back button!? It wouldn't let me
| get back to hn.
| sylware wrote:
| Since now google mail is blocking email addresses with ipv4 and
| ipv6 literals, I moved to a self hosted messaging site to
| interact with google mail prisoners.
| smileybarry wrote:
| This looks great, but I got a bit of sticker shock when I saw
| Glide's plan to do this is _$69 per month_ cost (billed yearly).
| There 's a free tier, but with a 1-app limit and only Big Tables
| (no Google Sheets). I'd be fine with paying for personal apps,
| but $69/month feels a bit... steep.
| graeme wrote:
| It's a tool targeted at businesses. The article writer just
| found a use case that works for them personally.
| caseyy wrote:
| The idea is neat but holy SaaS, the price for what it offers is
| ridiculous. It's not even about having the money, it's just that
| $828 p.a. price of entry to build a spreadsheet front-end is
| objectively a bad buy/business decision.
|
| Most people would just learn to code at a boot camp for $828 so
| they don't need codeless.
| drewbeck wrote:
| You and I have a very different idea of "most people"
| blizkreeg wrote:
| This comment reminds me of the infamous Dropbox comment :)
| caseyy wrote:
| Touche, but let's see...
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| ah, native advertising
| dhruvarora013 wrote:
| For my workplace, I built an internal orgchart and the backend is
| entirely Google Sheets. It's been completely hassle free and I've
| spent almost no time on the code since building it three years
| ago. As employees join and leave, HR adds/deletes a row in the
| sheet and only they have access to the "database" besides myself.
| In case of accidental deletion, there's the handy restore ability
| built into sheets so a database "rollback" is also trivial and
| can be done by HR without my input.
|
| Sheets as a database for light web apps is absolutely joyful to
| build with.
| dr_kretyn wrote:
| From a similar need I built the HomeHero app
| (https://homehero.pro) which helps maintain house inventory and
| now turning general (projects) inventory.
| j45 wrote:
| A great example where customers don't care as much what you code
| in especially for B2C.
|
| Is it a solution that works or is helpful is more of a bar.
| jayd16 wrote:
| You can easily add some user input with Forms and with some setup
| you can get SSO and require Google auth to the Forms and Sheets.
| You can also throw up some async jobs in Google Cloud Run
| functions.
|
| I automated some IT processes this way. These were tasks that
| were already a bit manual (like on/off boarding hires) and needed
| flexible workflows but would be helped with automation.
|
| When the scale is small it can be a nice little toolbox.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-31 23:00 UTC)