A Wizard A True Star wrote:
"Boy, was that one confusing site. But after watching their flash demo (the first five minutes are completely content-free) I think I have an idea what this software does. I think it takes the formulas you've inputted into cells and converts them into a C++ addin. Then you get a custom function that does the same thing as your formula, only faster, and if your formulas are proprietary then no one else can see them. But man, they sure have a lot to learn about getting their message across."
Sorry for the confusion. We've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to describe this thing "on paper" and it's not simple to do. We're happy to learn about getting our message across, and sincerely welcome any ideas you guys have on doing it right.
foxyshadis wrote:
"Given their likely target market, I think "content-free" is a perfect marketing strategy. Engineers are never going to look twice at this stuff anyway."
Maybe one look is enough. Feel free to give it a try to see if it might be promising. We're programmers over here, not marketers (though we have to play one on TV). And we actually use this product ourselves for developing our other products (which is how we came up with the idea in the first place).
Irrelevant wrote:
"my BS-ometer jumped straight to "waders recommended" at the phrase "completely takes advantage". I think it'd hit "man the lifeboats" by the time they'd pointed out that spreadsheet formulas aren't stored as binary. I never knew...
I don't really see why they'd get a patent for it, tho'. It's just a compiler for a functional programming language, with the declerations (variables) all called A1, A2, B1, B2, etcetc. Sadly, they'll probably get one anyway."
You're BS-ometer is well calibrated. But sometimes, well, how to put this delicately? Sometimes, you have to put sugar in the medicine to get a child to take what's good for them. Our feeling is there's a group of people out there who can benefit from this product, and not all of them have calibrated BS-ometers. If we were selling snake oil, dumbing down the story to get people to buy it would be unethical. I don't think this is snake oil.
As for a patent, I think there's more to it than a compiler for a functional programming language, but since I've never used a functional programming language I can't say with confidence. Don't worry about us getting a patent, though. We're not nearly as big as Microsoft, IBM, or any of the other patent factories, so as I've learned (sadly) a patent is worthless without $2M to spend enforcing it.
Can't really on that woman's picture, though. You guys have said it all...
So what is TurboExcel? You start with a spreadsheet that does some calculations. Some cells drive the calculations, some cells contain the results of the calculations. You tell TurboExcel which cells are the drivers, and which cells are the results, and it creates a function that takes the drivers as inputs and returns the results. The function is compiled to a DLL or a Linux .so, and also compiled into an Excel addin function. It doesn't operate on one cell at a time, it operates on a group of cells (unlike a Microsoft patent, by the way).
And if you create another Excel spreadsheet that uses that addin function, it too can be turned into a function in a DLL, ad infinitum.
Is this a big deal? Depends on who you are. If you don't know how to program, and you know how to use spreadsheets, you've now got a lot of power you didn't have before (we assume that's a good thing...). And even if you know how to code (like us) lots of times it's just plain simpler to throw together a prototype in Excel, and when you've got it working, instead of redoing it in C we just push a button and get the things instantly. And if you want to secure your spreadsheets, to either hide proprietary formulas or just prevent people from screwing up a spreadsheet they got from someone else, it can help you there, too.