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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

#31

Post by z2 »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #11

An absolute no-brainer. Python is the new BASIC - very popular with people who have to program to do their work but aren't programmers. It's an excellent choice for a spreadsheet.

Although, certain consumers (the financial industry comes to mind) might have so many massive, old, linked, and undocumented VBA-enabled spreadsheets that they would probably prefer VBA to at least be supported on a legacy basis for ever and ever.

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

#32

Post by erikj »

Daishiman wrote: post #25
gregschlom wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

"50 million cigarette smokers can't be wrong!"

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

#33

Post by askvictor »

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!]

Interestingly, the survey doesn't seem to consider education as a use-case of this - has your team considered that aspect? Spreadsheets are the most common way that school students are introduced to programming, and the only 'programming' that a lot of teachers (and others) do. There are heaps of reasons for this, but any even moderate programming (beyond very simple operations) in a spreadsheet sucks. Something like this (if it's easy out of the box) could revolutionise programming education (and data education for that matter).

Are there plans to get this working with the Excel web-app, or just the desktop version? I'm just having a daydream about Excel, Juypter notebooks, and OneNote Class notebooks...

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

#34

Post by jimnotgym »

Imagine all of those simple tasks that you could do in seconds with a python script. Export to csv in UTF-8 with double quoted fields. Loop through cells

  for row in rows:
     do some cool stuff
Pull data from a REST API using requests rather than some VBA hack. I'm getting over excited already. Edit data for your ERP and then post it back to the API and update the db... This is exactly what finance/data people want. Write custom functions (with numpy maths!)! No more nested If's. This will keep Excel as the premium spreadsheet app. I love it

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

#35

Post by CraigJPerry »

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.

I used to think that but I can't recall the last time the compiler saved me when augmenting or refactoring someone else's code - the IDE beats it to the punch every time - and static typing is not substitute for a good test suite.

On the flip side, i use interfaces and dependency injection constantly in java to work around static typing. In python, i write probably ~20% the amount of code because i never use interfaces, wiring logic or convert types.

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

#36

Post by deepnotderp »

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.

Try Cython, the benefits of both, IMO.

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

#37

Post by stestagg »

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.

Last time I saw the Bank of America python codebase, it had ~6 million lines of code, was worked on by about 4,000 developers, and ran some core, performance critical functionality.

Python programming is an aesthetic that needs learning. Many of the worst written, and least maintainable python codebases I've seen are by programmers/teams coming from "proper" languages and don't think they have to learn how to write idiomatic python.

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

#38

Post by bobwaycott »

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.

Sitting on 90K lines of Python here. It’s a breeze. Rarely see an error, and when I do, it’s from a third-party API failing to do its job properly (which is then successfully caught to avoid it causing problems). I’m interested in and use other stacks (mostly Elixir), but I don’t have any complaints about the language itself after 10 years.

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

#40

Post by davepeck »

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.

> strong, static typing is an essential feature for large scale projects

This is empirically false.

There are (of course!) good reasons to consider static typing. But, in my experience, use of static typing has never been a first-order predictor of business or technology success. It's quite possible to build considerable value with, for example, a large Python 2.x code base.

A fun, and tangentially related, talk: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/ideology

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