Last year I found myself subjected to the torture of using Excel against my will. At work we had a large number of records that had to be processed through a semantic analysis and were then transformed using an LLM. This data would be exported as a series of CSVs that hovered around 50,000 rows and ten-odd MBs. The analysis required that I immerse myself in the data, I had to filter it, sort it, knead it, all with the aim of programming an automatic pipeline that would transform it according to the client’s needs.
If you have ever, dear reader, worked with a large amount of data, you probably empathize with that need to have the data at your fingertips. Exploring and understanding data is not just having it in front of you in a pretty interface, but rather requires modifying it, putting it to the test, sorting something over here, filtering something over there, perhaps grouping relevant data, understanding what it is that you have in front of you. Playing with data requires a malleable interface, an extension of our thoughts so to speak, a way of connecting the ideas, which are locked up inside one’s mind, with the data, which are all neat and tidy on the screen in front of one.
Unfortunately Excel is nothing of the sort, it is a piece of Software that puts to the test the mental sanity of the poor person who has to find themselves subjected to the torment of using it. The following is a non-exhaustive list of the worst sins that Excel commits (version 2013, perhaps some things have been fixed), in no particular order:
- It locks open files: For some reason, probably conceived in the 90s, Excel locks the files it opens, which is to say I can’t modify a file opened by Excel, the Operating System locks it! This was particularly frustrating when, at the end of a pipeline that took several minutes to run and whose last step was saving a CSV, I couldn’t save it because I had the previous pipeline’s result open in Excel.
- It doesn’t allow having two files open with the same name: Ok, the previous point I could maybe understand… but this one?? I struggle to put into words the ridiculousness of what this means. The number of
output.csvfiles I had to rename toaoutput.csvand thenaaoutput.csvjust to see their content simultaneously still keeps me up at night. - The header row isn’t frozen by default: I believe that the importance of a datum is its context. In a table, a datum’s context is its row, the nearby data and its header. I have no idea whether this number in column 14 corresponds to
Units sold,Returns,New customers, orComplaints! I am a user and I demand context for my data! - Column fitting is cavemanlike: Or rather, nonexistent. A datum is important if I can see it, if I can contextualize it, if it fits on my screen.
- Opening large files is extremely slow: I am talking about minutes, plural. I am talking about files of a mere dozen MBs, un-ac-cep-ta-ble for a “Professional” piece of Software that sells at the price it sells at.
But, dear reader, I do not come here only to vent, to fill you with the same adrenaline I had circulating in my system during the almost 6 months that project lasted. Rather, I come to speak to you of the future, of the best tabular data viewer that exists on the market. Yes, exactly, I am talking about Tabula Rasa. A sublime, unsurpassable experience, one that respects the intentions of its users, and one that, perhaps, will draw tears of joy from more than one dear reader.
Tabula Rasa is a blank table, a clean slate, unlimited potential, an application of the “the user is at the center of the experience” kind of type. Tabula Rasa constantly asks itself, What is it that the user wants from me? It anticipates their intentions, it accompanies them on their explorations, it disappears between their fingers, in short, it connects their thoughts with the data.
Clearly, and perhaps a shrewd reader has already noticed that the list of complaints further above was not random, Tabula Rasa solves every pain I expressed, and on top of that it laps Microsoft’s Software several times over. Let’s look at the magic of Tabula Rasa:
- It is ridiculously fast: It opens instantly, it refreshes in an instant, and more importantly it opens multi-GB files in a jiffy. Nothing stops Tabula Rasa, it is that humble servant who is always ready.
- Locking files? What is this, the 90s?: Tabula Rasa never locks files, it lets you open files with the same name (or the same file) as many times as you want (I can’t believe I can market this as a feature 🤦). An open file changed on disk? It doesn’t matter! Tabula Rasa offers to reload it, or even to ignore the changes! It will never stand in the way of its user’s wishes.
- Extremely useful features: Smart column fitting, sorting of nested data, data grouping, information aggregation, filters (even SQL for the more geeky among you), instant search, heat maps, a long etcetera.
- The user is always at the center: I am not Microsoft or Apple, I can’t afford the luxury of ignoring my users. Quite the opposite, users are all I think about.
Dear reader, I don’t want to bore you by listing an infinity of features, I invite you instead to go to tabularasa.cl and experience the app. You can leave me some feedback at tabularasa@benjaopazoc.cl, but more importantly, explore your data, take advantage of the freedom I have just gifted you to understand your data without a Microsoft executive (or the corporation of your liking, we don’t discriminate here) deciding how miserable your experience can end up being, not before first extracting from you the money that I know costs you so much effort to earn.
Coming soon, we will explore the features of Tabula Rasa in more detail. If you, dear reader, are a nerd of the highest order like me, you are going to enjoy the technical challenge I have had to face while thinking only of you, my dear reader and future User of Tabula Rasa.