jake desantis

demo

a couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine was performing a dj set (as one does in their 20s). inspired by his ambition, i decided to get involved in the scene — but i didn't have $4,000 to spend on a deck and monitors.

the problem

i ended up looking into two different problems. first, there is the learning curve of software that was created from traditional coding practices, which is why people lean towards hardware.

i personally believe that unless one is trying to achieve the raw, analog sound of a Juno synthesizer or a 909, there is no other reason for hardware equipment. i also believe that software is still too bloated.

the thesis

the thesis became FREExTYLE, where the controls are literally only on the page if you need them.

how i built it

FREExTYLE uses React and Next on the frontend because it is the most productive way to develop new UX concepts that will shape the future of web-based applications.

see it in action

the chances of a smart person knowing the difference between what

"=COUNTUNIQUE(!A:A,E:E,"> 0")"

and

"Total rows in Drawers for all Closed Drawer Summaries data among rows where Variance of the same sheet is more than 0"

is only dependent on the time it took for them to learn that they mean the same thing.
additionally, which statement can you read to someone without having to show the table? - that's right, the one that reads like English.


this was when i asked myself, "why learn another language when i already speak one?" the learning curve in spreadsheets has less to do with writing functions as it does being able to understand the story that a spreadsheet tells about a dataset. data analysis without an invariant truth on its own information runs the risk of stating a narrative that may not be guaranteed by its informational truth, giving the wrong people the ability to make the wrong decision in a business. the seemingly infinite number of dauntingly laconic functions compound this noise factor - it is harder to catch a miscalculation. a business cannot survive on making the right decisions on-paper, because analysts might not know how to look at a potential issue that engineers don't yet understand.

when roughly 80% of the job market requires this skill based on a software that has not made a fundamental change since the early 1980s, one must assess whether the spreadsheet would be useful in the near future with AI, or whether the structure of the spreadsheet needs to live on in a new way.

gridpaper is the beginning of this solution. the premise is a spreadsheet software that replaces the confusing syntax language with plain english, because it is about damn time something like this existed. anyone in business that needs to rely on tables to see the profitability of their services or product sales will need to be able to read a table. gridpaper becomes an extremely powerful tool for this, because the function syntax is designed to read exactly what the function is in plain english.

you can try this out here (:

hello, my name is jake. i used to run a gym in south san francisco. now i work as the head of information technology for a group health brokerage. my whole life has been spent asking why things can't be better, and so i spend my free time trying to answer that question for myself. some of these early attempts have been shared with you here on this website.