denster

I spent 5 years in the 90s creating a WYSIWYG tool with Visual Basic 6 , and VB6 was a life saver.

I think retool is a fantastic, modern-day re-incarnation of that.

However, I think when the UX is important -- that is, a rich, pixel-perfect design combined with robust facilities to define custom app logic, a principles-first approach has to be taken.

We've taken one stab at this, to say that logic should be defined in a spreadsheet specifically tailored for the app-building purpose, and I think only time will tell if this approach is right. [1]

[1] Take with a grain of salt, I'm the founder of

I'm biased[1], but for this reason we took the approach of creating a spreadsheet from scratch for the sole purpose of creating logic for apps (both internal tools & customer facing UX).

Would be curious to get the everyone's input on our spreadsheet-driven approach -- thoughts?

To op, for tools like Figma, what do you think the future holds? In what dimension will they evolve? How can they help you be more effective? Will they help you express your ideas in ever higher fidelity over time? [1]

Hard problem:

How do we evolve design tools? Can Sketch/Figma be evolved to create full featured software? [1]

Something with no limits, and the freedom to create any feature developers create today with React/Angular/Vue.

Is it possible or a pipe dream?

Where's the Visual Basic 6 of our era? :)

Sure, apps weren't pretty, but you could bang one out in a few days and start getting use from it.

That's why I've devoted my career to tooling, hoping to improve the situation [1]

I think:

1) Design is like a muscle, you can always develop it

2) Digital experiences [1] are all around us! And they play a more pivotal role in our lives as time goes on.

So, hit the gym (practice) & with time everyone can improve.

So, at this point, I would say canvas is not required to render large grids in modern browsers (even though Google Sheets does this for likely legacy reasons)

[1] You can see how we render large grids at

Would be genuinely curious -- would our approach [1] help w/what you're working on?

I think we have 2 options:

OPTION 1)

We've reached a plateau -- software will continue to be developed as it is now, no new abstractions.

OPTION 2)

Mankind will create a better set of tools to:

- reduce the effort needed

- increase the # of people who can participate

in the translation of ideas/requirements -> software.

For everyone's sake [1], I really hope it's the second! :)

As one crazy idea, imagine if you could have a spreadsheet that would let you build software instead of crunch numbers... ... anyway, probably a bad idea, we should stick to our current abstractions and tools :D

[1] Take the above with 2.42 lbs of salt, I'm the founder of

As an example, we've spent the past few days on our eng team refining our spreadsheet functions for date/time handling, and it's like the 5th time we've iterated on this (after supporting everything Excel / Google Sheets do).

Funny part is, I'm sure we'll iterate on it even more -- it's hard to get this topic both right & make it easy to use / approachable.

Btw, does anyone have good reading materials on this topic? (date/time/locale handling)