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Power Fx: open-source now available

powerapps.microsoft.com

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Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#11

Post by derefr »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #4

When will they open source something meaningful, like Windows, Office or Edge? Prob don't want you to see the telemetry and government spying source code.

You can see the source code of Windows whenever you like. Pay for a Shared Source Initiative license and Microsoft will show you. Or just look at any of the old leaked versions. In neither case is there anything untoward going on in the codebase. Mostly what you’ll find is just integrated proprietary upstream-vendor source code that Microsoft licensed themselves for use in Windows, but does not have an unlimited right to redistribute in source-code form.

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#13

Post by m0zg »

Who's the user for this? It looks too "dumb" for a "real" programmer, and way too "smart" for everyone else. There's no way a real user will be able to navigate that "formula bar".

Source: have observed dozens of regular users through one-way mirror _while at MS_ ~18 years ago. The product later became Dynamics. Users would struggle to find the extremely prominent "OK" button sometimes, or press whichever button was highlighted by default even when they didn't mean to. Anything more complicated than that, it' completely hopeless.

Their own user testing probably shows the same thing, and that's probably why it's open source.

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#14

Post by fragmede »

imachine1980_ wrote: post #3

I think if low code should take of this is the tool for it, the biggest "low code" tool is excel whit hundreds more excel users than programmers, if not I think probably we over estimate how much people care about develop apps

Given how fiddly Excel is, which leads to extremely frustrated formula-writers and depressed advanced users, I wouldn't call Excel low-code. A rite of passage of learning programming pre-Internet, Google, and Stack Overflow (and Clang/llvm) is spending hours pouring over code, just to find out it was a missing semicolon or errant " symbol. Excel programmers go through similar shit with some regularity still (owing to the fact that it's not considered "real" programming and proper tools are elusive). (You don't have to go through that be a programmer, but there's comradery from having gone through similar rites of passage.)

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#18

Post by spaceisballer »

It’s interesting reading the comments here as I assume everyone here has more coding experience than myself. We have all the Power Apps at my agency and I have yet to find a use case for them. They seem really interesting but until there are good use cases I don’t see this catching on for most users. I’m trying to find some way for this to fit into my work and my employees but even the Microsoft training that I’ve attended doesn’t give much info. I’m sorry but automating notifications isn’t interesting and feels like new ways to micromanage. I feel like for this to thrive is to have good use cases put forth for regular users, then you will get buy in.

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#20

Post by tomcooks »

chris_wot wrote: post #6

Most of the functions I see in Excel are just old BASIC functions. Have they reinvented BASIC?

The core of their audience for this could very well be people who learned COBOL and BASIC for work 40 years ago and want to go back to programming, minus the "pick python will you? Or go, or js, or PHP, or anything reliable and useful and open" part.
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