Yes please.
Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
51–60 of 280 posts
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#52You can already do this with xlrd and xlwt.
Excel spreadsheets are cool because if you update data somewhere, it'll update all the formulas and products elsewhere.
How do you get that kind of "watch" behavior with `xlrd` and `xlwt`? You don't, you have to re-run a script. Sucks.
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#53Don't do it!
Why?
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#54I am 90% certain that MS has abandoned its EEE strategy from the nineties.
But the scars from that era are so vivid in my mind, that I feel the need of a confirmation.
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#55[deleted]
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#56I've probably mentioned this before on another news article. Not like it really matters.
Python is nice as a beginner scripting language since it's (to my own judgement) the most easily readable language to its function set.
When working with software like office, you are going to have a lot of users that don't exactly spend their days programming, or studying syntax. Excel is a little different in their own regard. The functions system has a lot of depth to it, and makes sense to a cell system, but for some it can be a but overwhelming in terms of how its written, since everything has to be written exactly as a function. I guess you also have generic office macros, haven't used them since high school.
In saying that, could this somehow be a reason why the office team have decided on a python interpreter, instead of say JavaScript or Microsoft's work on Typescript. Because python is easy to write, fast to learn, therefore users or even really employees in large data management positions don't have to worry about their time input?
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#57As long as the range object works in the same way, I don't care. Would be nice to have proper objects instead of having to use interfaces. It would also make a nice sandbox for beginners to learn python.
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#58Earlier 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 agree and I would add to that that many users of these scripting tools in Office are novice, and dynamic typing makes the language non self-discoverable. Static typing lets the IDE give a lot more feedback on invalid syntax, what can be done from there, etc. So I think this is a disservice we make them.
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#59Earlier 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.
Python is strongly typed, and Python 3 annotations with tools like MyPy brings static type checks.
Have you used MyPy? I'm currently looking to adopt it, but the feedback I've been getting is that it's a lot more painful to use than Typescript (which imho sets the gold standard of "optional typing").
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#60I'm actually more concerned with good tools for working with code than the language, but Python would be an improvement over VBA, and conceptually allow them to use Python tooling they've developed for other uses in Office.