Writing a lambda like that would require documentation. I wish Excel had a mode to look kinda like Jupyter except reactive (or observablehq except a desktop app), so I could easily add documentation for any cell and fold/unfold as I wish.
Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function
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Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function
#12Now we have a legitimate use case for the Y combinator.
What's next? A full implementation of scheme? Common lisp?
Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function
#13Am I the only one who read the title and was immediately reminded of http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/?
(Is the title a deliberate call to that site, or something even older?)
Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function
#14Oh no - can't they just integrate M instead? It's a great (skeleton of a) language with a similar basis but far nicer to write.
What is M?
Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function
#15Am I the only one who read the title and was immediately reminded of http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ ? (Is the title a deliberate call to that site, or something even older?)
The common parent is "Lambda: The Ultimate Imperative" (1976) https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5790/AIM-353....
Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function
#16Wow, that recursive example is a nightmare. I can't imagine being the person that's asked to debug what's going wrong here a few years down the line.
Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function
#17Oh no - can't they just integrate M instead? It's a great (skeleton of a) language with a similar basis but far nicer to write.
What is M?
M is the language of Power Query.
Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function
#18There is, perhaps surprisingly (or not), already a relevant XKCD mentioning this feature while poking fun at the computational abominations that were already possible in Excel: https://xkcd.com/2453/ On that note, TFA claims that the introduction of LAMBDA finally makes Excel Turing complete, unlike the kind of Turing machine simulators the stick figure is referring to in the XKCD comic... > (In contrast, Felienne He…
To be fair, no computer is an actual TM since memory is finite.
It can pause and ask you to temporarily attach another hard disk. Could be infinite as long as one can afford buying disks.
Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function
#19Great to see Excel adding more features! The argument I've heard against doing this sorta thing was that they wanted to keep Excel simple enough to not alienate many non-technical users, sorta forcing it to be a simple, accessible environment for everyone. It'll be neat to see how the user-base adapts to a more powerful feature-set. I mean, it'd seem like a lot of folks will be thrilled, finally having some extra fun…
Most organizations I have seen already only have a couple people who can actually make and edit the advanced sheets used by the org and lots of people who use those sheets with a very, very rudimentary knowledge of Excel to generally get their jobs done.
I don't really see the addition of new advanced functionality changing that paradigm.
Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function
#20Writing a lambda like that would require documentation. I wish Excel had a mode to look kinda like Jupyter except reactive (or observablehq except a desktop app), so I could easily add documentation for any cell and fold/unfold as I wish.
If you save it as a named function you can add a comment and that will appear as the tooltip while you're working on calling the function. If you're just wanting to comment how/why the function works in the cell you're defining or instantiating and immediately using it Excel has comments and notes you can attach to the cell or a group of cells.