Hey, this is awesome! As someone who primarily codes in Python, I love that it's first class with a REPL! Nothing frustrates me more then when I have to figure out Javascript for scripting in Google Sheets.
I ran through your demo and I have some feedback:
- Tab completion in the REPL would be great.
- When I change code in the editor, it doesn't update the cell where that code is used until I click on the cell, click away, and click back.
- When I ran the append function, it worked, but if I look at the array in the cell, it's unchanged. If I click on the cell and hit enter, it wipes out the append. I'm honestly not sure what the right behavior here is, I can see use cases on both sides. But initially I did expect the cell with the array to update with the new array.
- When I tried to do autocomplete on the capitals, it failed silently. I assume the API failed to fetch the capitals? It worked on the second try (but took a while).
- When I add a column into the sheet, it breaks all the code that has cell references. I'd expect the code with cell references to get updated unless my references are $F$4 for example, just like in the sheet itself.
* The REPL is supposed to do autocomplete where it makes sense. If you enter A1. it should show you a list of things you can do there. That always feels better than asking for it explicitly. Let me know if that doesn't work.
* Yeah, code changes don't rerun the affected cells. It is something we've debated, and maybe we should? It feels like it could also cause unexpected things to happen. Hmm. Maybe we should though.
* This is tricky. Spilling from a function, doesn't fill the cells and then append does. Open for suggestions on how to make this better.
* We call the OpenAI API - they don't always answer these days :-(
Excel has an option for formula calculation, automatic vs manual. The default is automatic. There is also a 'calculate now' button to use for if you have manual calculations set. I would expect that if automatic calculations set, then my code changes would trigger calculations on affected cells. I can't speak for Sheets, but most Excel users would probably expect that behavior.
Maybe? The closest analog in Excel would be to define a VBA function call it from a sheet, go back to the VBA editor, change the definition and see the function be run automatically everywhere with the new code. That does not happen, I just tried
For the tab completion, I think I tried typing the beginning a function name (hello) and then hit tab and it didn't complete.
> Yeah, code changes don't rerun the affected cells. It is something we've debated, and maybe we should? It feels like it could also cause unexpected things to happen. Hmm. Maybe we should though.
You know your customers better than I do. :). But generally when I use spreadsheets I expect bidirectional connections and updates.
> This is tricky. Spilling from a function, doesn't fill the cells and then append does. Open for suggestions on how to make this better.
I honestly don't know. Depends on your user's use cases. Even just for me I can see cases where I would want the cell updated and others where I wouldn't. Heck maybe even just ask the user "Do you want to update the cell?"
> We call the OpenAI API - they don't always answer these days :-(
My worry was more about random failures on Open AI side (I'm building something with it). Thanks for sharing. I'd love to see a blog post on how you are handling the quoting issues.
Are you planning on sticking with Open AI or is it a stop gap until you train your own models?
As for our own models, it depends on the use case. If you click the code assist and type "Insert a pie chart of the sources of income into B3", the Open AI models do a hard to beat (at this point) job. When it comes to fine tuning on a massive stack of existing spreadsheets, published models are a better fit.
I ran through your demo and I have some feedback:
- Tab completion in the REPL would be great.
- When I change code in the editor, it doesn't update the cell where that code is used until I click on the cell, click away, and click back.
- When I ran the append function, it worked, but if I look at the array in the cell, it's unchanged. If I click on the cell and hit enter, it wipes out the append. I'm honestly not sure what the right behavior here is, I can see use cases on both sides. But initially I did expect the cell with the array to update with the new array.
- When I tried to do autocomplete on the capitals, it failed silently. I assume the API failed to fetch the capitals? It worked on the second try (but took a while).
- When I add a column into the sheet, it breaks all the code that has cell references. I'd expect the code with cell references to get updated unless my references are $F$4 for example, just like in the sheet itself.
Overall though this is a great start!