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by jackamadeo
1215 days ago
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(co-founder of Neptyne here) With Google Sheets you get a flavor of JS called Apps Script, a flavor of JS with some limitations. Some ways in which our use of Python differ are: - run Python directly in the spreadsheet cells, not just as an "extension" - a full runtime in a Jupyter kernel, so you can import and use effectively any Python package, as long as it runs on Linux - an interactive REPL that gives you a nice test environment, but also a command line of sorts for working with your spreadsheet. (e.g. you can say `A1 = requests.get(URL).json()`) to do a one-off fetch of some data from an API. Generally speaking we hope to give you a much more powerful/seamless integration between spreadsheet/Python than what you get with Sheets/JS |
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You've hit the nail on the head: While Google Sheets supports Javascript, the integration feels clunky. You have to switch from the spreadsheet you're working on, to the Apps Script editor. This is awkward enough that I tend to avoid this functionality, even in use-cases where a few lines of Javascript code would probably save me time (vis-a-vis engaging in gymnastics in a bunch of spreadsheet rows/columns or a separate tab).
In comparison, Neptyne makes Python feel like a first-class citizen.
That said, you might want to consider slight changes to the UX so that users conditioned on Google Sheets/Excel's UX paradigms can use it with their "muscle memory." For example, when I select a cell and press the '=' key, I expect to be able to start typing in a formula. Both Google Sheets and Excel behave this way. In Neptyne, I had to double-click on the cell first. The closer the experience to the two "biggies", the easier it'll be to convince folks to switch.