[conductr]

It all sounds very compelling , great work! But I have to ask, what’s the catch? This almost seems like it’s ready to fully replace Excel but I’ve seen many things die in that pursuit. What will Excel users miss by switching?

I’m don’t do a ton to big data stuff, but sometimes despite Excels stated row and column support- I find it effectively melts down if even 100K/100 of data and forget adding formulas.

[jpiech]

Thanks. This is just a set of features that offer better (sometimes significantly better) performance and make it possible to work with large data sets in some predictable way, that is, knowing what the performance is with 100K formulas, you should be able to estimate how it'll work with 10 millions no matter how much formatting is applied, added hyperlinks, links to external closed workbooks, lists etc. That is probably correct, in the upcoming years there might be no way to compete directly with (the standalone) Excel. Hopefully it just helps to perform or verify various things way faster than in Excel with add-ins (or often at all).

[dismalaf]

> What will Excel users miss by switching?

The ability to use legacy spreadsheets and macros.

Let's be real, Excel self perpetuates by at once being awful but also the thing everyone used to use thus must still use.

Lots of spreadsheet apps better than Excel have come and gone over the years...

[ASalazarMX]

MS Office Macros are too easy for untrained users (that think of themselves as power users) to create, and once they grow big enough, it's very hard to port them to other applications. They're the monkey paw of spreadsheets.

[tobwen]

VBA and the ability to use Office files with embedded VBA are disabled in many corporations… Some malware in the past used VBA for their attacks and Microsoft never added a proper sandbox.

[cyanydeez]

I wonder if anyones gonna eventually just create a wrapper API to just a vm that runs some stock excel open to a spreadsheet...