apple2 VS datasette

This is the part which saves crazy time:

The loving part of VBA is its interoperability across the Office suite, but there's no reason why that couldn't be done in, say, Python

I agree with you, but Python and pretty much every code environment is missing a few things that create a pretty high barrier to entry:

For a whole lot of things, VBA is not even needed. People put data into cells, operate on it with formulas in other cells that drop output into still other cells which are then used to get output.

Input can be almost anything these days.

Formulas have a well defined, easy to understand syntax that work across a wide variety of operators.

Output can be almost anything these days too.

And it's live. Make a change, see it happen.

That's real power! People don't have to know much to make it all work either.

I have been using Excel to transform business data for years, model business and a lot of other things, and as a rapid prototype system. I can write code too. Often I do, but the more specific and or variable the task is, like a one off need to solve yesterday, the more attractive just banging it out in Excel becomes.

Check this thing out:

https://github.com/tilleul/apple2/tree/master/tools/6502_ass...

It's a perfectly usable, and I would suggest one of the easiest, assemblers I've ever seen!

I just used it to knock out a little routine for a retro-game project I'm working on and was kind of stunned at how lean, accessible, functional this really is.

Simon Willison's github would be a great place to get started imo -

https://github.com/simonw/datasette

I'm a fan on simonw's datasette/dogsheep ecosystem https://datasette.io/

I use Anki the exact same way. After a lifetime of learning I have accepted that I will never read over anything I write for myself voluntarily - so my two options are:

1. Write an article so good I can publish it and look it over myself later on. I did this last year with https://andrew-quinn.me/fzf/, for example.

2. Create Anki cards out of the material. Use the builtin Card Browser or even https://datasette.io/ on the underlying SQLite database in a pinch to search for my notes any time I have to.

Were you aware of, or tempted by https://datasette.io/ for creating your solution?

Browsing HN, GitHub and the like we get to see a huge variety of software products and code bases.

I often see products and think - if this product X, got together with Y, it would be pretty cool - kind of like if they had a kid together.

Not too literally, but more on the conceptual level - my level of programming is low.

E.g. Just some....

- pocketable.io & datasette (+with some more charting) [https://pocketbase.io, https://datasette.io]

You might like the Datasette project: https://datasette.io/

I don't think they are desperate for contributions but it's a welcoming environment and a fun project to hack on. You'll learn a lot just from reading the source and the incredibly informative PRs. The creator is a really talented developer with a great blog which shows up on the HN front page often.

Last year I worked through the challenges using VisiData, Datasette, and Pandas. I walked through my thought process and solutions in a series of posts.

> uploads of boring raw excel data and receive a nice UI

https://datasette.io/