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0 pointsmikorym6y ago0 comments

R Shiny is another example of a reactive programming mess. I spent about 7 or 8 hours of trying to write a reactive program but for which the use case was actually straightforward (and I would have preferred to write it imperatively).

My use case was basically filters: you have three dropdown lists that change based on the ones you select previously. Power BI and MS Excel filtering is good enough to solve the problem.

I wonder if there is something written about how MS Excel handles filtering internally; maybe it is something like a directed graph?

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TeMPOraL6y ago· 2 in thread

> I wonder if there is something written about how MS Excel handles filtering internally; maybe it is something like a directed graph?

Reactive programming is a directed graph underneath. Excel itself is a poster child of reactive programming.

Speaking of reactive programming, what is the name of the "fuller" form that works on a proper graph, with loops, and can handle fixpoints? Constraint solving?

mikorymOP6y ago

Great! This means that I was right when I mentioned to a co-worker that Excel (and its filtering) would have an intersting implementation underneath (from my category theoretic perspective). In fact, I am quite interested to understand the formalisms behind it.

Do you know of any links or resources about this?

mumblemumble6y ago

> Reactive programming is a directed graph underneath. Excel itself is a poster child of reactive programming.

And I'm no more able to debug an Excel spreadsheet I didn't write myself than I am to debug a reactive program I didn't write myself.

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