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Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

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Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#161

Post by dragonwriter »

cableshaft wrote: post #13

I 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…

> I wish it wasn't solely powered only by Microsoft Cloud and could support python running locally,

There are existing solutions for that, but it would be more complicated for MS to support and secure.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#162

Post by Sakos »

stainablesteel wrote: post #73
nologic01 wrote: post #35

I wish Libreoffice would have smelled the coffee long time ago. In principle scripting using Python is possible but exceedingly cumbersome/ugly and there seems to be no roadmap to improve on this. The same warning applies to the linux desktop and all its apps more generally. Increasingly proprietary platforms will be rolling out advanced "AI" functionality extensions to classic apps that are cloud based, many of them…

that's interesting, i see the opposite. python is so easy to script that imo excel is nailing its own coffin. with an aging and retiring demographic of people that have never used a programming language, anyone who learns to incorporate python into excel will end up preferring python because its both more flexible and scalable. i have no reason to use excel except for basic drawing board math, if someone demands a sp…

> with an aging and retiring demographic of people that have never used a programming language

This simply isn't true in any way and is completely divorced from modern businesses. Everybody I know who works in an office setting works with Excel. None of them know Python and none of them have touched a programming language. Almost all of them are younger than 30. And if anybody who's 20 starts at one of these companies, they'd better know Excel because that's what the business is built on. Not like that 20 year old is gonna know anything about programming either. 99% of people just aren't programmers and aren't going to learn programming when they just want to futz around with some numbers and the easiest (yet also the most powerful) tool they know for it is a spreadsheet.

If somebody in any business, anywhere, at any point wants to do something with numbers, they're going to use Excel.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#163

Post by lolinder »

boppo1 wrote: post #132
benterix wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You still have no control over the data you place into the Windows VM, which would include the data in the Excel sheet.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#164

Post by taylodl »

rawgabbit wrote: post #146
taylodl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This alone could eliminate the need for websites that just want this sort of data I catch flak for this all the time! Our users just want to be able to use Excel to free-form analyze their data. IT, of which I'm a part of, insists on building web apps to do that for them. They're never happy because all they wanted was Excel. I keep explaining all we have to do is build a data mart built using SQL Server, and use o…

To be fair, Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep, and Tableau Cloud are great if expensive products. With Tableau Prep, you get a visual ETL tool. Being technical, I prefer SQL, but for business folks Tableau Prep is more of a REPL so they see what their actions are going to do. They can schedule these Prep flows in Tableau Cloud which will ETL and produce daily datasets which users can then interact via the dashboards on T…

> I am positive there are people with their wallets open.

Take our money! The entirety of the Fortune 1000 would license it on day one!

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#165

Post by giaour »

extraduder_ire wrote: post #129
giaour wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Javascript in Excel would be nice. JS has been one of the supported add-in languages for a while[0], but that's not quite the same thing as the new python offering (which sounds more like jupyter within excel). Since excel is often (mostly?) used for working with financial calculations, I for one am glad they went with python for this feature instead of a language that insists that an IEEE 754 double is the only ki…

JS has BigInt now, and it almost works like you'd expect. Need to put 'n' after all of your numbers though.

True, but financial calculations tend to involve non-integral numbers. Python has arbitrary-precision decimals via: https://docs.python.org/3.11/library/decimal.html

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#166

Post by ayhanfuat »

baz00 wrote: post #143
ayhanfuat wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is easier to manage to be honest. They are using Anaconda distributions so if you tie each workbook to a distribution with possibility to update/rollback it makes things a lot easier than trying to manage a local installation.

Try explaining that to the dude who inherited the workbook in 9 months who doesn't know what Anaconda is, barely knows what Python is and was told that his job was Excel which he's really good at because he did a Udemy course on it 3 years ago. That's the problem.

I would assume that workbook would be tied to a version that it was created in and the if the user does not want to update they can just continue using it with the older Anaconda distribution. They don't really need to know what Anaconda is in this scenario. It only becomes necessary if you want to update a certain workbook to a newer version.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#167

Post by nixass »

cardamomo wrote: post #11
hathym wrote: post #3

》Python calculations run in Microsoft’s Cloud No thanks!

That caught my attention too! I'm curious why they would choose this model.

As soons as nonsense like this comes about you can tell straight away that it's not in user's favor. It's probably to tie you into subscription, data mining, selling mined data to ad companies and squeez every single dollar they can out of you

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#168

Post by localhost »

snickerbockers wrote: post #150
localhost wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are few key reasons for running in a hypervisor isolated container on Azure with no access to the Internet: - We can guarantee a consistent experience for all users. Imagine having to maintain your own local distribution of Python and guaranteeing that it works with Excel as versions diverge over time? Yikes. - We make it possible to share your Excel workbook with other users and have the calculation just work.…

I agree with point 3, but points one and two don't make any sense because games have been skipping with Python scripting for decades and this is never a problem. The python interpreter is embedded into your program as a library and it doesn't have any dependency on the whatever python version the user installed.

> games have been skipping with Python scripting for decades

That only works if there is a forever fixed version of Python embedded in your game. The value of Python in this context is its ecosystem and folks will need to install additional packages and libraries into the execution environment. Now you're managing a local distribution of Python.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#169

Post by ayhanfuat »

Disappointing:

> Python in Excel is currently available to users running Beta Channel on Windows. This feature will roll out to Excel for Windows first, starting with build 16.0.16818.2000, and then to the other platforms at a later date. [1]

> Python in Excel is available in Excel for Windows. The feature is not available in Excel for Mac, Excel on the web, Excel for iPad, Excel for iPhone, or Excel for Android. On unsupported platforms, workbooks containing Python can be viewed but Python cells display an error when recalculated. [2]

[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/announcing...

[2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/introduction-to-p...

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#170

Post by nprateem »

gpjt wrote: post #108
nprateem wrote: post #14

I wonder who'll be the first to ship python in a major browser

There's https://pyscript.net/ -- or do you mean for scripting the browser's behaviour rather than replacing JS in website code?

Yeah, making python a first-class browser scripting language to displace JS. I think we all know it's time. Even if it takes a decade for ubiquity, it'll be worth it.
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