pqm VS gnu-units

I made a spreadsheet add-on similar to the pint library for python (dimensional analysis) based on my own open source JS library (https://github.com/GhostWrench/pqm). Website is still up: https://ghostwrench.net/convertplus.html.

To me it seemed like the perfect way to get a solo app up and running because Google was going to run all the sever stuff and I could just cash in. The app never really got off the ground and by the time I realized that Big G really doesn’t want to make it easy for any schmuck to run a profit generating app using their servers and their technology and it wasn’t worth the maintenance effort to keep up with the constant requests to update the app. I think it is no longer available on the GSuite store as of a few months ago. I think my biggest mistakes were as follows:

1) I needed a business/marketing oriented co-founder. I underestimated how difficult that job is and overestimated my ability to do it.

2) I wanted to charge too much for the app. I didn’t want to undersell myself and get caught in a trap of not making enough to keep up with maintenance. I went too far the other way. I think maybe a $50-$60 on time charge would have been appropriate, instead of requiring a subscription. This is an easy fix, but I would had to re-do my marketing effort and see #1

3) Built before I tested the market. I convinced myself that just asking a few of my engineering friend would use it was enough. Again, this is probably a symptom of #1

4) I was mentally unprepared to deal with failure and I lost motivation to keep working on the project when things didn’t go as I expected.

5) I underestimated how much people actually use spreasheet add-ons. There really isn’t a thriving market and most of the really popular apps are a utility attached to another popular standalone project.

6) Probably should have targeted Excel rather than Sheets, because the market is simply bigger.

I think if the stars align, I would like to give this project another go. I don’t think it has totally failed rather than just gone dormant, but I need a better strategy for round 2!

There are heaps of libraries for all languages because it is a fairly fun and straight forward project. I personally created this one because I was frustrated with how slow and clunky the existing javascript libraries were:

https://github.com/GhostWrench/pqm

Also, I open sourced just the unit database (in JSON format) for anyone interested in making their own version:

https://github.com/GhostWrench/unitdb

you might want to try units(1).

https://www.gnu.org/software/units/units.html

the input language is less flexible than wolframalpha/google, but i quickly got used to it. it's nice to have something local and reliable. you can also define custom units.

i prefer using it in terse mode:

    $ units -t 0.03$/hr*1month

Yes, units must not be used for currencies, it relies on hardcoded conversion rates. The latest version uses prices from FloatRates (2020-11-15) for most currencies and services.packetizer.com/btc for bitcoin. So while units is very very good for units conversion, it's no good for currencies unless you don't need more than a crude rule of thumb.

Does the GNU projet makes it repositories available online ?

I'd like to have a look at the code but all I found is an outdated mirror : https://github.com/ryantenney/gnu-units