xlwings doesn't let you write Python code straight in the cells and have it immediately Just Work. It requires you to install a plugin and write commands in a separate file to execute Python. The UX difference is key here.
I got really excited at first, wondering if this all took place inside Excel. Realizing now that's not quite what is going on here but probably aiming for a similar experience.
It's impossible to do these things inside Excel, I guess. Things like xlwings or https://www.blockspring.com/ try to make Excel better, but there are way too much assumptions going down there.
The experience with "objects" with the Blockspring add-in, for example, is terrible terrible.
We're taking that as a compliment. From talking to users, a key piece of feedback we've gotten was that the experience of using AlphaSheets has to be really similar to that of using Excel.
In fact it is probably all Javascript. The formula editor at the top is an Ace editor, the spreadsheet itself is based on https://github.com/openfin/fin-hypergrid, which is an incredibly enourmous piece of software I had never heard of and which I don't understand at all what it is trying to accomplish, but I can see it renders to canvas.
Yes, the computations are all done server-side, which lets us parallelize big computations. It also keeps our thorny evaluation logic crisp and maintainable, because Haskell. =)
Yes, it does. Live updating already works (i.e. if A and B have a sheet open and A updates it, B sees the updates at the same time as A). And you can share links with others. These features are disabled for the demo, though.
Hey! I'm Alex, a cofounder of AlphaSheets. The three gifs on the page link to spreadsheets that you can play around with, with a majority of features already functional. Is that not fair game for Show HN? (I will admit that this isn't immediately obvious, so I apologize for any resultant confusion.)