I thought there was a project for typed Excel. Any news on that one?
Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
161–170 of 280 posts
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#162VBA's one saving grace is that it's been available on every company computer I've ever used. Alt+F11 and I have an IDE. It's probably responsible for getting a few people involved in programming.
But it had some serious limitations and some unexpected behavior compared to "real" programming languages. I hope that adding Python to Excel can be my new "guaranteed to be there" language on coworker's computers and get even more people involved in programming.
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#163Is anyone using javascript to write excel macros?
That functionality has been out but a while right?
Do people use it? What do they use it for? What makes them step back and reach for pandas or salesforce instead?
For me, working across multiple excel files sucks right now. Excels handling of datatypes kind of sucks. And pretty spreadsheets that people like looking at and working with have a bunch of annotation in them so you end up extracting the sub tables you need anyway - why not into csv/dataframes.
Tableu makes a lot of this better. Why not copy them instead of giving us another language to cheer about then ignore.
Why not integrate power bi more tightly with Excel and ship it in the basic version of office, then let us script in there?
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#164Does Excel have a "plugin framework" for new languages the way Jupyter does? Ideally any language (Python/Julia/R/whatever) can be added by a third party without Microsoft's direct involvement.
The plugin authors would only need to map a language or library's DataFrame mechanics to Excel's table layout. (Microsoft could even use Apache Arrow to represent the data.)
I imagine there would be lots of possibilities by providing "hooks" for language designers to connect to.
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#165Earlier 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.
This is to script spreadsheets, not build the next Netflix. I would hate a typed language in there. Besides most static typing systems are ridiculously weak and introduce more headaches than they actually solve.
>This is to script spreadsheets, not build the next Netflix
With some of the spreadsheets I've seen, the next Netflix might just come out of it.
Just kidding, but only a bit. I've been at factories where if VBA stopped working, I literally don't know if we could have produced product that day.
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#166I hope they wont localise the function names like they do for cell formulas. Never have i met someone who enjoyed this.
I do quite a bit of VBA, but not much other programming. Could you clarify what you mean by localized?
Just that the cell formulas cannot be (elegantly) accessed from VBA?
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#167I would love this, but for a unique use case: we generate _a lot_ of workbooks using Python. Some of them have hundreds of thousands of automatically generated formulas. We also have to write tests for workbooks. If we could embed Python, which all of our developers know, into Excel, it would make testing our formulas a bliss, rather than the burden it is today.
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#168I'd vote for Lua: faster and less heavy than Python... Plus my biggest concern for Python would be how well the team can sandbox it. I know in this regard Lua also has advantages. Disclaimer: I am _way_ more proficient in Python than Lua, I just think Lua is a better choice.
I was thinking the same. Would Excel be able to embed it like so many other projects do?
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#169What is interesting is also the implications of them now considering python. First if it is python, it is not javascript, which seemed to have been their previous favorite candidate until now (not sure if it really picked up). Second, the writing on the wall for VB as a language starts to look like a time square billboard. They basically put VB.net in maintenance / compatibility mode like webforms and winforms. I thi…
excel already supports javascript for custom functions, add-ins, etc
Re: Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback
#170What is interesting is also the implications of them now considering python. First if it is python, it is not javascript, which seemed to have been their previous favorite candidate until now (not sure if it really picked up). Second, the writing on the wall for VB as a language starts to look like a time square billboard. They basically put VB.net in maintenance / compatibility mode like webforms and winforms. I thi…
excel already supports javascript for custom functions, add-ins, etc
I wasn't aware one could do UDF with javascript. Thought it was for addins only.