Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Dwolb 3740 days ago
Hey great work. I like that people are re-thinking spreadsheets as users get more technically inclined to use more sophisticated tools.

What do you think about fixing R notation to not describe cells, but the named array? i.e. instead of Average(A2:B2) it's Average(this_array) where this_array is the name for the row/column data and when the Average cell is clicked, highlight cells A2:B2?

There are many cases around detecting the proper array name or the user not inputing column or row names, but due to the ability to quickly read and understand the code as it relates to the sheet may make certain trade-offs more acceptable (i.e. forcing he user to enter array names).

1 comments

Thanks for the feedback.

Your suggestion about named arrays is important and relates the discussion here around the approach taken in the OSX Numbers app and the now dead Lotus Improv. Its connected to a planned feature in Stecnila sheets that I call cell "mapping" - effectively projecting an R/Python object onto grid cells. There is some more about that here: https://github.com/stencila/stencila/issues/118.

Also related is an proposed improvement in how sheet expressions are translated into R code for arrays: https://github.com/stencila/stencila/issues/157