As I putter away...
Jan. 31st, 2006 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupStill doing vast amounts of data entry for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
taxlady. While so engaged my brain doesn't have a lot to occupy me, so I've been mentally re-engineering the Quickbooks program I'm using to enter the data.
Its actually not a bad program, but it could be far smaller, far more general, and simultaneously more powerful and easy to use. The key is the recognition that what it is doing is essentially performing general spreadsheet-type calculations (with some minor constraint propagation) over a large number of cells that are imbedded in pretty forms and stored in a database. They have specialized forms for all sorts of things, when what they should have is a completely general engine and a way to build and edit custom forms and to explain the relationships between the cells, just like you can do in a spreadsheet.
The resulting program would be more flexible, more customizable, easier to maintain, and could support such things as activity templates so that when I am entering all the mileage for a vehicle, I don't have to keep telling it that yes, its for the same damn vehicle as the last 400 entries...
Given such an underlaying engine, one could also build the ultimate spreadsheet, which I'm still surprised no one has written. (I designed it when VisiCalc first came out, but I assumed it was an obvoius progression and it would soon arrive. It never has.) One could also make a day-timer style calendar, contacts list, appointment minder, etc database as well.
I wonder if I could turn this idea into a money-making project?
taxlady. While so engaged my brain doesn't have a lot to occupy me, so I've been mentally re-engineering the Quickbooks program I'm using to enter the data.Its actually not a bad program, but it could be far smaller, far more general, and simultaneously more powerful and easy to use. The key is the recognition that what it is doing is essentially performing general spreadsheet-type calculations (with some minor constraint propagation) over a large number of cells that are imbedded in pretty forms and stored in a database. They have specialized forms for all sorts of things, when what they should have is a completely general engine and a way to build and edit custom forms and to explain the relationships between the cells, just like you can do in a spreadsheet.
The resulting program would be more flexible, more customizable, easier to maintain, and could support such things as activity templates so that when I am entering all the mileage for a vehicle, I don't have to keep telling it that yes, its for the same damn vehicle as the last 400 entries...
Given such an underlaying engine, one could also build the ultimate spreadsheet, which I'm still surprised no one has written. (I designed it when VisiCalc first came out, but I assumed it was an obvoius progression and it would soon arrive. It never has.) One could also make a day-timer style calendar, contacts list, appointment minder, etc database as well.
I wonder if I could turn this idea into a money-making project?
