I’m in the frustrating position of having spent a fair chunk of last year doing cool stuff with Resolver One, a python-based spreadsheet app. Frustrating, because the manufacturers have started handing out prizes for interesting resolver-based projects — and I’m in no position to talk about, let alone open-source, most of what I’ve been doing.
Instead, I’ll just repeat that I
love
Resolver — it’s good enough to impress me despite being closed-source, and Windows-only*, and mainly aimed at financial number-crunchers in the City.
The main appeal for me is having python tightly integrated into a spreadsheet. Lambdas and list comprehensions are a natural fit for spreadsheets, to the extent that it’s painful trying to re-learn how to do things in Excel or OpenOffice. Here’s a simple example for adding up wages:
1
=SUM([row[‘
Salary
‘]
for
row
in
<Employees>.ContentRows
if
row[‘
job
‘] == ‘
Postman
‘)
But, since the expression in every cell can be an arbitrarily-complex python expression, you can do much more intricate calculations in the same idiom. Plus Reslver is built on IronPython, which gives you the ability to use .NET libraries as well as python ones. And you can export your spreadsheet as a python class, letting you plug it into any other application you fancy. And, and…
Anyway, that’s the end of enthusiasm. Back to grumbling about politics shortly, no doubt.
* I’m still a dedicated Ubuntu/Debian user. But Amazon, flexiscale or GoGrid will rent you a Windows server for ~10c/hr, so I’ve only been marginally inconvenienced by Resolver being Windows-only.