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Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

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Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#421

Post by exikyut »

chengmau wrote: post #311

I know the architecture too good, more than I need as I was leaving MS recently. This tweet is not likely to happen. Talking about desktop apps, this doesn't make any sense. Office apps have millions of lines in code and many years of lost knowledge between the classes. Just too many screens, checkboxes and features. A complete bloatware. Buy MS doesn't take any feature off the app- if you have 1B users, most likely…

I've always been curious... are the Word and Excel layout engines more complex than HTML+CSS+SVG?

Not in terms of code bloat/complexity (these exist in both, as you've just described), but in terms of engine size, drive-ability, edge-case handling, etc.

It's probably a hard question to answer; it's (for some reason) hard for me to articulate exactly what I mean too.

And regarding Excel-literally-in-the-cloud... is that why Microsoft needed to make Azure? :P

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#422

Post by exikyut »

contextfree wrote: post #417
4ad wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for clarifying this nonsense. So, what the hell was this guy tweeting about?

In my experience most people in Microsoft have only a vague idea of what other teams are doing, even when none of it is really secret. If Office is starting to adopt React Native for some of its new UI components, and meanwhile there's a lot of work happening on the Office 365 web portal and Office web apps, internal telephone rumor circulation can morph that into "all of Office is being rewritten in javascript"

Hmm.

Whoever makes the first neural model capable of returning interesting insights after being installed in the telephone switchboard/backbone is going to have a most unique life.

Edit: Just realized ISPs have probably been trying to do this for years. I'm talking about the first individual. It'll probably happen routinely in 20 years or so.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#423

Post by pnloyd »

jorams wrote: post #410
nameiscubanpete wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd almost guarantee that it's Typescript. But being a superset of Javascript, it's still correct to call it Javascript.

It's really not. YAML is a superset of JSON, but you wouldn't call a YAML document a JSON document. The set of all colors is a superset of the set containing only orange, but calling every color orange makes no sense.

I don't think it's exactly right to call it a superset either..

It adds types and constraints that have no effect on the resulting transpiled code besides an insurance that said type constraints are being met.

To better illustrate what I mean, in the start of a Unix script you sometimes have them augmented with #!interpreter. But this extra contextual information is not a superset of the scripting language itself. Likewise Typescript is also an augmentation that lives within the code that provides contextual information to the Typescript transpiler itself, but does not necessarily effect the actuall produced JavaScript.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#424

Post by rdiddly »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #332
leeter wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I can imagine MS would love to kill VBA it would be a major loss of business if they did. Oil and Gas lives in the stuff and would probably even sue MS if VBA died. That said could it be getting a much needed fixup... probably. I suspect the same is true of COM plugins.

I rewrote a 3000 line VBA function into C# earlier this year for a Oil/Gas company. It was surprisingly easy. Sometimes tedious, but easy. It runs faster, it's easier to maintain and now they can slap whatever front-end they want on it. Is it money, fear or gatekeeping that keeps these VBA programs untouchable?

For me it's time, but I guess that's just money...

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#425

Post by kumarharsh »

jorams wrote: post #410
nameiscubanpete wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd almost guarantee that it's Typescript. But being a superset of Javascript, it's still correct to call it Javascript.

It's really not. YAML is a superset of JSON, but you wouldn't call a YAML document a JSON document. The set of all colors is a superset of the set containing only orange, but calling every color orange makes no sense.

All colours don't boil down to "orange" in Human eyes, so calling all colours orange really would be pointless. Typescript does compile down to JS, without which it can't even run. So yeah, when you're talking about the runtime or performance, Typescript === Javascript.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#426

Post by nawgszy »

cgh wrote: post #241
nawgszy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>good, far more suitable languages Can you give a simple analysis on what weaknesses JS has that other languages would avoid with no pitfalls of their own?

Why not take the opportunity to learn other languages and see for yourself rather than ask someone to hold your hand? Show some initiative.

How on earth am I the one who needs to "[s]how some initiative" when some guy literally just says "JS is a flaming pile of trash" and gives no justification?

It was an ad hominem and I asked him to expound on it.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#428

Post by Tsiklon »

youseecomrade wrote: post #304
chandmk wrote: post #283

As a side note, Microsoft login echo system sucks big time in the context of office. You have no idea which URL to use to login to office 365. Between login/logout/timeout/other office apps/personal accounts/business accounts/forgot password workflows browser redirects to various URLs at least a dozen times. And you keep seeing new URLs I am wondering how less tech savvy people are coping with their authentication wo…

Some login servers that you go through, like Skype's, share the same IP address that many "anti-telemetry tools for Windows (10)" are blocking.

That has to be a deliberate choice on the part of Microsoft.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#429

Post by kchr »

emodendroket wrote: post #391
dentemple wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean that VBA will finally die? Please tell me that VBA will finally die.

VBA is really useful and it's not like there is something to replace it, so I hope it does not die.

Lua, Python, Ruby, ...?

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#430

Post by ygra »

wilsonnb2 wrote: post #272
TensorMetric wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/office-365/161295/microsoft-r...

Well that's disappointing. The simple ribbon in the new OneNote feels like such a step back from the ribbon UI in OneNote 2016. It does say users will be able to enable the full ribbon UI still, so I suppose I will have to do that. Hopefully they don't deprecate that feature.

In the past the reasoning to replace the menu system with ribbons completely and not allowing to switch back is the understandable desire to not having to maintain and test two different UIs all the time. Two different ribbons may still work, as the ribbon already has information about "importance" or "prominence" of each item, but I fear eventually there'll be only one remaining in the future.
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