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Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback

#21

Post by pdpi »

gregschlom wrote: post #17
blhack wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>aren't programmers Also extremely popular with people who are programmers and need to do things. Sorry, this is a frustration of mine lately. Python is a fantastic introductory language. It's also a fantastic general purpose language. Newbies get turned off of it because it feels too easy, and they know that "real" programming is supposed to be hard.

I disagree. Python is great for scripting and for small projects, but I believe strong, static typing is an essential feature for large scale projects. I wouldn't want to use Python for anything that's predicted to end up with more than a couple thousand lines of code.

Python 3 supports optional type annotations that you can check with something like flake8.

Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback

#23

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

gregschlom wrote: post #17
blhack wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>aren't programmers Also extremely popular with people who are programmers and need to do things. Sorry, this is a frustration of mine lately. Python is a fantastic introductory language. It's also a fantastic general purpose language. Newbies get turned off of it because it feels too easy, and they know that "real" programming is supposed to be hard.

I disagree. Python is great for scripting and for small projects, but I believe strong, static typing is an essential feature for large scale projects. I wouldn't want to use Python for anything that's predicted to end up with more than a couple thousand lines of code.

Most people writing VBA code for excel are only informal programmers. For example, I never took a CS course in my life but learned VBA and programming on the job. Since then I've learned python and other languages but when I'm doing a home project or something I always come back to python. It's just so easy. I was working on a macro the other day in Excel, it took me a couple hours to get it all working but I'm pretty confident that if I could've coded in python I could've banged it out in 20 minutes or less.

Edit: I suppose my point got a little lost. What I mean is that I highly doubt much Excel code is a "big project." It may feel that way when you crawl through some of the hideous VBA coding I've done but much of this is due to the inexperience of the coder and the realities of VBA. Give me python + 4 or 5 libraries and I could recode anything I've ever made in VBA in 1000 lines or less.

Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback

#24

Post by Groxx »

esmi wrote: post #8
odonnellryan wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the strategy here re: security? I assume it'd be a fairly stripped-down version of Python ... or will you just design the UI to say "you probably shouldn't execute files from people you don't know" etc?

From a security point of view how is embedding python different from embedding Visual Basic? This is not my area of expertise so I’m genuinely curious.

Potentially different. .NET allows signed binaries / libs / a fully signed execution context, Python has nothing equivalent AFAIK.

Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback

#25

Post by Daishiman »

gregschlom wrote: post #17
blhack wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>aren't programmers Also extremely popular with people who are programmers and need to do things. Sorry, this is a frustration of mine lately. Python is a fantastic introductory language. It's also a fantastic general purpose language. Newbies get turned off of it because it feels too easy, and they know that "real" programming is supposed to be hard.

I disagree. Python is great for scripting and for small projects, but I believe strong, static typing is an essential feature for large scale projects. I wouldn't want to use Python for anything that's predicted to end up with more than a couple thousand lines of code.

Given that there are literally thousands of huge projects using Python at massive scale and hundreds of kLOC, it's clearly not essential.

Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback

#26

Post by xapata »

gregschlom wrote: post #17
blhack wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>aren't programmers Also extremely popular with people who are programmers and need to do things. Sorry, this is a frustration of mine lately. Python is a fantastic introductory language. It's also a fantastic general purpose language. Newbies get turned off of it because it feels too easy, and they know that "real" programming is supposed to be hard.

I disagree. Python is great for scripting and for small projects, but I believe strong, static typing is an essential feature for large scale projects. I wouldn't want to use Python for anything that's predicted to end up with more than a couple thousand lines of code.

That's a fine personal opinion but I'll add my vote to Python being a wonderful choice for large programs.

Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback

#27

Post by smortaz »

bdowling wrote: post #14
smortaz wrote: post #2

Clickable Link: https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-... [disclaimer+bias: on Python team @ msft & would love to see this happen!]

So, would this imply numpy and scipy support in Python for Excel? How about support for Excel worksheets within Jupyter notebooks?

That's for the Excel team to decide. My personal hope is that they'll offer as a base:

* Python 3

* Numpy, SciPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Altair, ...

* Pythonic bindings for Excel APIs (sheets, etc etc)

* VSCode's Python Editor + Debugger built in

* Some sort of conda based env/pkg mgmt

* Right-click, "Open in Jupyter" (data/code)

*

Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback

#28

Post by Lxr »

gregschlom wrote: post #17
blhack wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>aren't programmers Also extremely popular with people who are programmers and need to do things. Sorry, this is a frustration of mine lately. Python is a fantastic introductory language. It's also a fantastic general purpose language. Newbies get turned off of it because it feels too easy, and they know that "real" programming is supposed to be hard.

I disagree. Python is great for scripting and for small projects, but I believe strong, static typing is an essential feature for large scale projects. I wouldn't want to use Python for anything that's predicted to end up with more than a couple thousand lines of code.

Instagram would disagree with you. Seriously, Python is an absolute pleasure for managing large web projects and the lack of static typing has never been an issue for my company (spend the time writing tests instead!)

Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback

#29

Post by caioariede »

gregschlom wrote: post #17
blhack wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>aren't programmers Also extremely popular with people who are programmers and need to do things. Sorry, this is a frustration of mine lately. Python is a fantastic introductory language. It's also a fantastic general purpose language. Newbies get turned off of it because it feels too easy, and they know that "real" programming is supposed to be hard.

I disagree. Python is great for scripting and for small projects, but I believe strong, static typing is an essential feature for large scale projects. I wouldn't want to use Python for anything that's predicted to end up with more than a couple thousand lines of code.

Python is strongly typed, and Python 3 annotations with tools like MyPy brings static type checks.
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