Coda Community -- Formula use cases

With my limited programming knowledge, using formulas in various simple ways is easy, but anything that involves combining a lot of different formulas to create something super powerful is really tricky for me. I need a way to learn how to start doing this.

It would help me a lot to see use cases of the specific formulas I want to learn more about. I’m not sure the best way to approach this, but I had a few ideas.

First option: a section in the community that is dedicated to this. In it there would be a topic for each formula, where people would post comments with their use cases for that formula.

Second option: a community wide tag system. Basically, anything could be tagged with the formulas that were mentioned. For example, a question about the Nth formula would be tagged with Nth, so that anyone with a similar question would be able to find that convo easier. Another example would be in doc show and tell, where the main formulas that were used could be tagged.

Idk if these suggestions are any good, but I thought it would be useful for you guys to know what my struggles as a beginner have been. Thanks!

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Hey @zoglow! I really like where your head is at on this. One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about is expanding our formula documentation to have more examples of formulas in practice to make them easier to apply to day to day problems. I think tagging would play in really well here - what kinds of tags do you think would be helpful? Use case, formula components, something else? Lay it on me!

:chart_with_upwards_trend::pencil2::computer:

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:smile: That would be great! Tags I can think of: Beginner-intermediate-advanced (possibly based on how complex the example is, aka how many formula components it has), broad use cases (aka examples that could be applied to many docs, like makeshift buttons), narrow use cases (basically mini docs? Very specific). That’s all I can think of at the moment. Hope that is at all helpful :woman_shrugging:

Awesome ideas @zoglow! For the tag system, I think the template gallery would be a good place to start with the tagging so people know how these templates are built. A video series about how the templates were built by the creators would also be useful for people to start learning the formulas. It would also spark new ideas for creators who want to build off of those templates.

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Both of those things would help me a lot!

I am digging all these ideas - thanks for the input super community folks! Keep the ideas coming…

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Btw, when I made this I hadn’t known about the new video courses you made. Last night I watched both of them, and they were amazing!

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Thanks @zoglow! I love building new content so let me know if you have anything on your wishlist :slight_smile:

@maria +1 to have a community post for each formula. The formula page is very brief for each formula and it would be very helpful to be able to discuss and point out the nuances for each formula. For example with FormulaMap() there is so much that could be expanded upon, like using it with Sequence().

Or with Filter() how chaining has a huge performance hit as opposed to using AND in the formula. Dates and times are very nuanced and could benefit from this as well.

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Excellent idea!
I second this!
+1

You make a great point! We’re in the process of working on a few ideas to address the depth of formulas right now. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I’d love to know any of your favorite formula discoveries so we can expand our content even more. Thanks!

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