| Thanks for sharing. I just realized your use case could fit quite neatly into Inflex (my app, not open for signups, but has a “try” sandbox), a use case I never considered. I have an unexposed WIP type of cell that is a rich text document. The rich document you edit has corresponding code, which you can also edit in the other direction. (screenshot https://mobile.twitter.com/InflexHQ/status/14923564133263360...) The neat part is that I added the ability to embed a “portal” to display another cell, such as a number or a table, which can be edited inside the rich text doc or at the cell’s origin. For tutorials, I figured it would also be nice to display the source code of a given cell in a rich editor. E.g. The formula [plasma * 3.23224 + alpha] yields [7.289221]. You could edit the text (The Formula ... yields ...), or the formula and see the result. Finally, the rich editor is already in a format ready to be printed as a PDF or Word doc. Also, the source code being the source of truth means it’s very easy to version the whole system down to SHA512 hashes. This could unify a use-case like yours, where you have the Google Doc and the Google Sheet bridged by Python, this would cut down that iteration feedback loop. Being content addressable means that only tests that need to run would be run (see Unison lang), rather than running all tests every time, further cutting down on the feedback loop. One question that comes to mind is: what if you could export code in the spreadsheet as a general purpose language like C or Python? Or even Lua? Also, would an on-prem/desktop version of the product would be valuable for this use case? Thanks for the food for thought. This is a niche I never considered! And I’ve worked on a medical device for Amgen before! I forgot all about this. |
Of course, with systems like JAMA, that automatically ingest Word docs and extract requirements, even to the point of generating verification tests, in turn kicking off dependency updates, the development loop becomes quite tight.
We definitely have to improve on the process that exists right now, as it's quite cumbersome to get all set up, and won't really generalize to new devices, but it's been a great learning experience, and I think it's really improved our development process overall!
Definitely a very complex problem to automate in the general case, makes sense why the JAMAs and Greenlight Gurus of the world can charge ungodly sums per seat.