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Quadratic – Figma-for-Spreadsheets – Is Multiplayer

40 points| davidkircos | 2 years ago |quadratichq.com | reply

30 comments

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[+] davidkircos|2 years ago|reply
Hi, I am David Kircos. The Founder of Quadratic (https://QuadraticHQ.com), an open-source spreadsheet application for engineers that supports Python, SQL (coming soon), and classic Formulas. Unlike other spreadsheets, Quadratic has an infinite canvas (like Figma). As a result, you can pinch and zoom to navigate large data sets, and everything renders smoothly at 60fps.

Today, we launched real-time Multiplayer on Product Hunt!

Quadratic is built using WebGL and Rust WASM. We built our multiplayer service from scratch in Rust to handle large amounts of data smoothly. For smooth rendering of a large grid of data, cells and text are rendered using low-level WebGL for performance. If you are interested in the technical details, check us out on GitHub (https://github.com/quadratichq/quadratic/)

What do you think? Can we make a spreadsheet that developers actually enjoy using?

[+] josephg|2 years ago|reply
Cool! I’ve spent a lot of time building OT and CRDT based collaborative editing. What approach did you go with for quadratic? What were the pain points you had with existing systems that motivated you to write your own?
[+] dustingetz|2 years ago|reply
How do you handle server sync? What is the use case? You don't seem to be for application building, rather for doing analysis work (https://www.quadratichq.com/examples) where the main problem you solve is "No more squinting into a tiny terminal to see your data output"? So this is a data swiss army knife for developers, a dev sidecar if you will that attaches to your python REPL i guess. How do you make money?
[+] BrittonR|2 years ago|reply
Congrats on the launch! I was just looking at the Multiplayer PR earlier this week and was hoping it would be released soon. I’ve always been frustrated with Excel and you’ve built a product that I’ve legit dreamed of for years.

Thanks for building in CO!

[+] ebiester|2 years ago|reply
It depends on the license and pricing.

I'd love to consider bringing to my org, but not if I don't have a true path. I won't even evaluate it unless I have a clear path to use.

[+] hsnewman|2 years ago|reply
Wouldn't it be called multi-user?
[+] toasterlovin|2 years ago|reply
Multiplayer has become the term of art for concurrent editing of the same data structure by multiple users.
[+] bitvoid|2 years ago|reply
"Multiplayer" seems like a weird term outside of video games, but I think it conveys multiple real-time concurrent users more than just "multi-user" would.
[+] starkparker|2 years ago|reply
Apparently not anymore, since a more "fun" word exists for multiple users of a calculator
[+] mitchbob|2 years ago|reply
Sounds fantastic. Any word on what the pricing will be when it's launched?
[+] davidkircos|2 years ago|reply
We will always be free for individual use, and our Teams pricing will initially be between $10-20 /user/month.
[+] datadrivenangel|2 years ago|reply
How does this compare to Google Sheets or Excel on o365?
[+] davidkircos|2 years ago|reply
Quadratic speaks Python natively and is built on an infinite canvas!
[+] sevg|2 years ago|reply
This is not open source(!).

Edit: There's no obvious mention of open source on their website or docs (presumably because that would be legally unwise), so it's false advertising on HN for likes.

Relevant GitHub issue: https://github.com/quadratichq/quadratic/issues/824

[+] davidkircos|2 years ago|reply
Quadratic's source code is openly available on Github, we will amend our language to "open access" going forward. We are far more open than any other spreadsheet, and pride ourselves on that!