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Excel team considering Python as scripting language: asking for feedback

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

#241

Post by ptx »

zoom6628 wrote: post #178

Much as i would love for the power of Python in Excel it is important that whatever is done is consistent across the office experience. Some of us old enough to remember the multiple versions of VB-whatever across Excel, Word, Access and that in itself was a blow to productivity. Yes they should choose Python, and in the process decide if it will be Python with a .Net library (standard and core as seperate libs pleas…

> VB is a great language for newbs and casual/adhoc programmers

Is it, though? For example, VB puts four different ways of passing arguments right in your face: values by reference, values by value, object references by reference and objects references by value. Python only has the last one and doesn't make you think about it.

And without "Option Explicit" VB does something very unhelpful (also seen in PHP): misspelled variables are created on read and silently converted to the required type, giving you nonsense results. (With "Option Explicit" enabled it gets verbose and tedious instead.)

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

#242

Post by Scarblac »

ptx wrote: post #241
zoom6628 wrote: post #178

Much as i would love for the power of Python in Excel it is important that whatever is done is consistent across the office experience. Some of us old enough to remember the multiple versions of VB-whatever across Excel, Word, Access and that in itself was a blow to productivity. Yes they should choose Python, and in the process decide if it will be Python with a .Net library (standard and core as seperate libs pleas…

> VB is a great language for newbs and casual/adhoc programmers Is it, though? For example, VB puts four different ways of passing arguments right in your face: values by reference, values by value, object references by reference and objects references by value. Python only has the last one and doesn't make you think about it. And without "Option Explicit" VB does something very unhelpful (also seen in PHP): misspell…

I'd say what Python does is passing object references by value.

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

#243

Post by cm2187 »

toyg wrote: post #180
cm2187 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is also why it is surprising that Microsoft has spent so little time on office in 20 years. Outside of changing the colors regularly, there has been very few new significant functionalities between Office 2003 and Office 2016. And opening the VBA IDE is a nasty reminder. I'd argue large companies are still running Windows because of Office. The cost of retraining people, redesigning all of these user processes…

> very few new significant functionalities between Office 2003 and Office 2016 The first release to feature the Ribbon, arguably one of the all-time major changes in Office, was 2007. That took quite a bit for most users to get used to. An Office suite is not where you add experimental features for the hell of it. People use it to get the job done in so many different scenarios, any change will significantly impact e…

Reshuffling buttons when they added ribbon is what I would classify as "changing the color", not really a new functionality.

There are many things lawyers, bankers, consultants and accountants would need that Office doesn't do. Linking a spreadsheet to a powerpoint document is a nightmare right now. Linking spreadsheets between them too. There should be a way to express a UDF as a spreadsheet so that people who can't code could create their own UDF. I love Apple's Number canvas approach, where a sheet is not a grid but a canvas on which you can add grids or charts, and they overflow with a scrollbar. Etc.

There are lots of new functionalities they could add that would make people's life better. Instead these products barely evolved in 20 years. Click the "fx" button in excel 2016 and you will get the same non resizable dialog box with a tiny listbox and a search box that doesn't search anything than in Office XP.

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

#245

Post by govert »

garyclarke27 wrote: post #235
auxym wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transparent access to Excel tables as Pandas Dataframes would be so, so very awesome. I mean, MS implemented these really nice Tables in excel, but then left us no way to easily query them with something like SQL.

I agree, SQL in Excel would be awesome, Index Match everywhere is a right pain to maintain - to replicate foreign keys. Its amazing what you can do with Sumifs and Countifs, but SQl is better. VBA is OK but NO search across modules makes it such a pain just to find your code, I wish VBA had better support for UDFs so that they can appear the same to users, as built in functions with tooltips. MS have done a really ba…

You can add-in IntelliSense for VBA functions using the (free) Excel-DNA IntelliSense extension. See this detailed write-up by Charles Williams: https://fastexcel.wordpress.com/2016/10/07/writing-efficient...

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

#246

Post by resoluteteeth »

Excel already has VBA, C add-ins, COM interop, VSTO, javascript addins, and random functionality that's only available by using functions left over from Excel 5.0 macros (before VBA). These all have different weird limitations.

What Excel absolutely does not need is for Microsoft to add another scripting language in a half-assed fashion and then get bored and stop again.

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

#247

Post by ptx »

Scarblac wrote: post #242
ptx wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VB is a great language for newbs and casual/adhoc programmers Is it, though? For example, VB puts four different ways of passing arguments right in your face: values by reference, values by value, object references by reference and objects references by value. Python only has the last one and doesn't make you think about it. And without "Option Explicit" VB does something very unhelpful (also seen in PHP): misspell…

I'd say what Python does is passing object references by value.

Right. I listed them in the wrong order and wasn't quick enough with my edit. :)

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

#248

Post by vanderZwan »

euske wrote: post #210
vanderZwan wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel itself is functional and reactive already, wouldn't adding an FRP language on top of that be a bit superfluous? Check out Felienne Hermans' work if you haven't already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yKf8TrLUOw http://www.felienne.com/publications

Excel is reactive already, but its field functions can't have variable bindings or procedural operation as far as I know (unless, of course, you write your own separate VBA function). I sometimes want to write in a complex one-liner and thought lisp/scheme would be a great choice.

Ah, fair enough. I mean, I'm not debating the power of Lisp, and it would be great first languages for someone not trained in programming. OTOH, there is of course the trade-off to make it as useful for as broad a selection of users as possible; Python has a lot more mind-share, and the SciPy ecosystem would be a great complement.

If Excel adds some practical convenience functions to the global namespace, would it be that hard to make Python fit the reactive paradigm in this context?

About those variables: maybe the Bumblebee tool she and her team made[0][1][2] would work for you

    Our language is an extension of regular Excel formulas, 
	 so you can write a transformation like
    
    A1+A2  SUM(A1:A2)
    
    which allows BumbleBee to transform exactly the formula 
	 A1+A2 to SUM(A1:A2) or vice versa. 
	 
	 In addition to using exact cell references, you may also
	 use variables instead of cell references:
    
    {i,j} + {i,j+1}  SUM({i,j}:{i,j+1})
I hope it can be useful to you! :)

In the video I linked before she mentions it at 31m33s. Oh and here[3] are the slides for that video, in case you prefer those.

(Disclaimer: I don't use Excel myself; I'm just a programmer who wants to get more people into programming, so I was both happy and impressed when I saw her presentation on how people not trained as programmers use it to do really complex tasks)

[0] http://www.felienne.com/BumbleBee

[1] http://www.felienne.com/archives/2964

[2] https://figshare.com/articles/BumbleBee_A_Transformation_Env... Paper on BumbleBee

[3] http://gotocon.com/dl/goto-amsterdam-2016/slides/FelienneHer...

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

#249

Post by auxym »

mistermann wrote: post #216
auxym wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transparent access to Excel tables as Pandas Dataframes would be so, so very awesome. I mean, MS implemented these really nice Tables in excel, but then left us no way to easily query them with something like SQL.

Someone posted a link to a really nice 3rd part addin on the reddit thread, on mobile so can't find the link unfortunately but was very well done. Shame on Microsoft for half-assing Excel for the last decade.

Possibly querystorm, in case anyone is looking for it. It did look interesting last time I looked at it, but I've never tried it.
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