I've had a shocking experience of this product (abysmal performance, memory leaks and poor support). It's basically a poorly wrapped version of pyxll[1] which I would recommend instead. It's not production software.
I'm really sorry about that. When did you use the software? We've fixed a number of memory leak issues in the past few months, so this was likely resolved.
Additionally, we don't wrap pyxll; we have a completely seperate architecture.
It's not trying to target power users. They would learn VBA.
It's not trying to target data processing. People who care enough would use a library like xlrd/xlwt.
It's not trying to go after big industries like finance. It's easy to interop outside of excel and from within VBA, and most hedge funds and banks have their own solutions already.
This is specifically targeted to the casual people who want to do some in-Excel scripting but don't want to learn VBA. In that light, the product seems way over-priced (and probably should be in the $5-10 range) and unlikely to ever be used in a production setting.
| It's not trying to target power users. They would learn VBA.
Most of our users know VBA and prefer not to use it. (Programmers who've ever tried VBA are familiar with its downsides; I won't go into them here.) Python is a significantly more productive language than VBA; our clients can typically write programs 10x faster in Python than in VBA. More importantly, a large class of programs that are trivial to write in Python using open-source libraries would take months or years of development time in VBA.
| It's not trying to target data processing. People who care enough would use a library like xlrd/xlwt.
xlrd/xlwt are very good for a subset of what DataNitro does: specifically, static processing (input and output) of Excel files. They don't support more complicated use cases (for example, building an interface to an external data source for non-technical end users, or a spreadsheet that runs analyses based on user input).
| It's not trying to go after big industries like finance.
We have a number of users in finance.
| It's easy to interop outside of excel and from within VBA
I wouldn't say it's easy, especially for people who haven't done it before. It'll certainly take more than two hours to figure out, at which point the license has already paid for itself.
| most hedge funds and banks have their own solutions already.
This is true, but internal solutions are frequently less flexible and harder to use than DataNitro; at the least, this makes them unsuitable for work done by non-developers (e.g. quants). It commonly saves developers time as well.
| This is specifically targeted to the casual people who want to do some in-Excel scripting but don't want to learn VBA.
Given the option, most people prefer to use Python over VBA; this is true even if (in fact, especially if) they know both languages.
| In that light, the product seems way over-priced (and probably should be in the $5-10 range) and unlikely to ever be used in a production setting.
DataNitro is used both in production and as a prototyping system by a number of firms.
Don't think most users are looking to use this in a production environment. Virtually everything you can do with DN and Excel generally, you can do much more effectively without touching excel. It however is extremely useful for one-offs, prototyping, and for those unfortunate situations where you need excel.
Additionally, when I've had issues, they've typically been handled promptly and thoroughly.
I was wondering how IPC was done. I would imagine that VBA works on in-process data structures whereas you'd have to marshal messages over IPC to get Python working.
I really really don't want to grammar-nitpick (this looks like an amazing product) but 'less bugs' kind of hints at low quality. If I were you (and I'm not) I would replace that with 'fewer bugs' or whatever.
The prevalence of less/fewer errors everywhere is astounding. I saw a national ad on TV the other day with 'less calories' featured prominently. This error was the first thing I noticed on the page as well... but I'm guessing we're in the minority here.
All that said, the product is fantastic. Have been using it for a year on an almost daily basis.
Less energy, fewer calories. My understanding is that it's not continuousness or discreteness that determines whether "less" or "fewer" is appropriate, but whether the noun the word describes is a "count" noun or a "mass" noun. Mass nouns are just nouns you can't pluralize, but can refer to a multitude of something (you can't own "furnitures"), and count nouns are nouns that only refer to a multitude of things when plural.
It's saying that the "turn" happened in an unspecified time but less than two nights. Because the unspecified time period is a continuous variable you can't use fewer (which is used for discrete values).
I took pains to say that I wasn't asserting any universal truth about the English language. I'm not taking a position on whether it has or hasn't been used in English or any other language, with or without nouns, countable or otherwise. I gave my perspective about my reaction to reading 'less bugs' and suggested what I would do were I the author (acknowledging as I did it, that I amn't).
You might be able to present me with evidence and thereby change my internal grammar (I'm sure everyone except Chomsky has their own individual version), but it might be a few years before those words no longer triggered the same response.
I'm game if you are.
(Edit: dmm edited his comment to remove the words "Is there any evidence I could present that you would accept?" from this comment's parent. For shame!)
> I gave my perspective about my reaction to reading 'less bugs' and suggested what I would do were I the author
You claimed regret in "grammar nitpicking". I claim that saying "less bugs" is perfectly acceptable grammar. I interpreted your original comment as meaning you think "less bugs" is incorrect grammar. Maybe you should have said something like "style nitpicking".
I haven't made a single grammar claim. I have, quite deliberately, not taken a prescriptive approach. Please quote and prove me wrong.
Are you saying that my 'regretting nitpicking' is a grammar claim? It was true when I wrote it and doubly so now.
Are you saying that when I wrote 'you could say' that I was making an assertion? "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it," and all that. If everything is black and white to you then I'm not much interested in continuing this conversation.
Are you saying that my reference to this as a grammar issue and not one of style is a claim? If so, I suggest you head over to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less and correct all the text and metadata that mentions 'grammar' in the context of that argument.
I interpreted you using the word 'grammar' to mean that you were making a grammatical claim. And I was thinking of grammar as binary thing, either right or wrong. I thought of grammar as a set of rules that would determine whether a statement was well-formed.
You include in the idea of grammar not only correctness but also judgements like: "less bugs" sounds bad to me and probably isn't appropriate for professional communications. In my mind at the time that sort of statement wouldn't have been a matter of grammar. Maybe spending all day with formal languages and programming gave me that idea.
I don't know how to communicate with you. It's hard to do sometimes with just the written word. Sorry for wasting your time.
Wish there was a better sales page explaining what it does instead of having to download a trial. Importing/parsing a .csv file isn't hard in Python. What else does it do?
We don't plan to support Mac OS X or Linux.
Drats. So much for my version of Excel on Linux.
Seriously, OS X seems a pretty glaring oversight. I know I'll get snide replies about the amount of users, Libre Office, or using Numbers. That misses the point. I can share an Excel document with a normal bit of VBA and share it with any Excel user, dating back several years. This product must be installed on all computers that I'm sharing with, and it totally eliminates OS X users (as well as Excel 2003 users, which a quick check shows makes up anywhere from 10-20% of users)
This product looks to be a fit for a controlled environment that needs specific features that VBA simply can't achieve.
I don't know what the current state of Office for Mac is. But the Windows and Mac versions have an interesting and colourful history. A number of separate codebases, converging and diverging.
I don't know if this is the best, but it gives an overview:
[1] http://www.pyxll.com/