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Ask Slashdot: Spreadsheet With Decent Programming Language?

Posted by timothy on from the index-cards-and-a-hole-punch dept.

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?"

2 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Version numbers... by Myopic · · 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.)

  2. Re:My problem is quite the opposite. by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, 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.