April 6, 2026
Excel? In my terminal?!
sc-im Spreadsheets in Your Terminal
Retro spreadsheet vibes spark nostalgia, bug reports, and a one‑dev SOS
TLDR: sc‑im, a one‑dev terminal spreadsheet, just shipped v0.8.5 and asked for donations. Commenters split between retro love and real‑world gripes—bugs, missing or disabled Excel features in packages, and a “use a GUI” debate—while a rude drive‑by got checked with a call for constructive feedback.
A new release of the one‑person project sc‑im—a keyboard‑driven spreadsheet that runs in your terminal—has the community buzzing, bickering, and laughing in equal measure. The dev shipped v0.8.5 and posted a heartfelt donation plea, and the crowd’s reaction ranged from retro love to “please fix the bugs.”
Nostalgia lit the fuse first, with one user quipping “So Lotus 1‑2‑3,” summoning 80s spreadsheet ghosts. Fans love the idea: a fast, Vim‑style (read: all keyboard) spreadsheet that can open CSV files and even modern Excel files (.xlsx), with color, backups, and scripting. But the honeymoon ended fast. A tester praised it as “pretty neat” yet flagged bugs and complained that packaged versions (like on Fedora) skip some Excel features unless you build it yourself. Another user begged for saving to .xlsx so they could sneak spreadsheets to Office coworkers “without them ever knowing.”
Then the drama: a drive‑by “very shitty software” jab got smacked down by a calm “be specific” reply, turning the thread into a mini‑moderation moment. Meanwhile, the big clash erupted: terminal diehards vs GUI believers (graphical app fans). One critic roasted the text‑mode charts as “hilariously imprecise” and argued spreadsheets just feel better in a point‑and‑click window. The result? A perfect internet split—half cheering the hacker‑core charm, half asking, “Cool toy, but can I send it to my boss?”
Want to peek? Try sc‑im on GitHub.
Key Points
- •sc‑im released v0.8.5 (05/21/2025) and the maintainer requests donations to continue development.
- •sc‑im is an ncurses-based, Vim-like spreadsheet derived from the original ‘sc’ by James Gosling and Mark Weiser, with later mods by Chuck Martin.
- •Features include Vim-style navigation, undo/redo, large sheet sizes (expandable), CSV/TAB/XLSX import/export, ODS import, Markdown export, formatting, sorting/filtering, subtotals, clipboard, gnuplot integration, Lua/C extensibility, and non-interactive mode.
- •Installation requires ncurses, bison/yacc, gcc, make, and pkg-config; optional dependencies enable clipboard, plotting, XLS/XLSX support, and Lua scripting. Build involves editing src/Makefile and running make.
- •Configuration uses a scimrc file in ~/.config/sc-im; macOS installation via Homebrew is supported, with Lua 5.1 recommended for scripting. Ubuntu and other distro guidance is provided via wiki pages.