It seems it took 6 years from "consideration" to an actual release: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15927132
Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
131–140 of 455 posts
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not OP but I would never want to use this if I was running a security minded business. Why would it be okay to send out my entire dataset to the Microsoft cloud to run a few simple queries. How long is the data stored on your servers? Since it’s operating on the data directly, it’s not possible to anonymize or redact the contents of the data.
Practically speaking, if you are running recent versions of Windows (I don't remember when exactly this trend started, with 2000? XP?), you have basically no control over what data you send to them and when. You can try to block traffic but it will interfere with normal Windows operations. You can try to investigate and play cat and mouse game with Microsoft, but they will always be one step ahead of you - unless you…
What if I’m running windows in a VM in Ubuntu and only feeding it exactly the relevant stuff?
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excel already has versioned file formats with significantly different affordances, and hasn't appeared to have all sorts of compatibility headaches as a result.
Integrating a whole separate language ecosystem is one or two orders of magnitude more complex though. It’s more like HTML5/WHATWG suddenly adding Python as a first-class scripting language besides JavaScript, and web browsers having to integrate that.
Isn't this what people are trying to do with pyscript? Although in that case it uses WASM?
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#134> “I’m excited that this excellent, tight integration of Python and Excel is now seeing the light of day,” says Guido van Rossum, Python’s creator and now a Microsoft distinguished engineer. It's depressing seeing someone who has done so much work for the free software community now working to enrich the spyware-laden proprietary product offerings of a megacorp. Nothing about this is "good for Python" or hackers - it…
Here I was, hoping he worked on performance, typing, dependency management or other hard, meaningful issues in the Python ecosystem.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#135I wish it wasn't solely powered only by Microsoft Cloud and could support python running locally, but regardless I think this will still be huge and single-handedly modernizes Excel by a large margin. This alone could eliminate the need for websites that just want this sort of data. I can think of a past project at a previous job I did building an analytics website used only by a handful of people internally that cou…
Adding python support for local use would be a great way for me never to open an excel file ever again.
That is so dangerous.
Wasm maybe, full-blown runtime without any sandboxing? Nope.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#136Bold prediction: this will have a greater economic impact than LLMs over the next 10 years.
I'd say they are doing this because of LLMs, so that normal users can tell Excel what it should be doing, and it then generates a script which can execute it.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#137How will this work in practice? Will this just be python version 3.XX forever? How will packages be maintained? Do you get to specify any of this so when a future version of a package is introduced without backwards compatibility it doesn't break everything immediately?
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a YC company that did it, maybe a decade ago. I bet someone will remember.
DataNitro! I knew very little about programming and was trying to create examination schedules for the faculty I was working at. I managed to convince the dean to buy a license and it pretty much changed my life (granted it was mostly Python that changed it but DataNitro made it even more accessible it to me back then).
DataNitro was my inspiration for the Open Source version of xlwings back in 2014. They have been out of business for many years though.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#139I wish it wasn't solely powered only by Microsoft Cloud and could support python running locally, but regardless I think this will still be huge and single-handedly modernizes Excel by a large margin. This alone could eliminate the need for websites that just want this sort of data. I can think of a past project at a previous job I did building an analytics website used only by a handful of people internally that cou…
Hi I work on Excel, can you write a summary of why that's important to you and send it to bgruenbaum@microsoft.com ? I'll get it in front of a PM. Alternatively PMs read all the feedback sent via the feedback UI on Excel web and desktop so you can use that instead if you prefer.
Ever used Excel inside a SCIF? There's a lot of important work that happens on computers that aren't connected to the Internet.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#140I wish it wasn't solely powered only by Microsoft Cloud and could support python running locally, but regardless I think this will still be huge and single-handedly modernizes Excel by a large margin. This alone could eliminate the need for websites that just want this sort of data. I can think of a past project at a previous job I did building an analytics website used only by a handful of people internally that cou…
Being powered in the Cloud they can protect you from malicious code