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
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.
Agree with making it as much the same where it can be the same. In this case it should work the way it works with the other spreadsheets though. Click a cell and start typing should work and for me just did when I tried. Can you reproduce this? Thanks!
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