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My thoughts on Python in Excel

xlwings.org

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Re: My thoughts on Python in Excel

#21

Post by Neywiny »

The cloud thing bugs me because a lot of times buying things, managing licenses, etc, is a hassle. I disagree that bundling Python wouldn't work given blender does it, I think inkscape does it, and done other common programs. Would it be nice if they didn't? Sure. But they do and I trade a fraction of a percent of my disk space for that modularity.

Also, there are a few excel handling packages for Python. I've even made graphs and everything. Because sometimes other people like to use Excel and that's fine. I'll just stick with those instead.

Re: My thoughts on Python in Excel

#22

Post by adolph »

a_bonobo wrote: post #4

One should note that this comes from xlwings, a Python-in-Excel plugin with a $1,490 professional lifetime license. Excel's changes will end up eating their reason to exist.

If you take a look at Excel’s implementation, Python in Excel is going to be part of this person’s sales funnel.

Re: My thoughts on Python in Excel

#23

Post by smcin »

superb_dev wrote: post #17
smcin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your personal use-case might prefer Lua or Scheme, but most casual Excel (or SQL) users are non-programmers so they won't. They'll want the equivalent of decently-documented macros or boilerplate they can easily and quickly use without modification. (One common Excel use-case will clearly be "import/munge lots of data from various sources, then pass it into some AI model, then process the output". Can't see people wr…

Python in excel is a feature I would only expect to be used by power users. Someone who spends a lot of time in excel. Calling these people “non-programmers” isn’t true, excel itself is a pretty esoteric programming language. I personally don’t think python is the problem here, but if their users can learn python they can certainly learn lua.

That's exactly what I said above: most Excel users are non-programmers. Hence Python in Excel would only be used by a subset of Excel power users.

Moreover, having to pay $$ recurring subscriptions for that stack to run open-source software (Python) they could run for free elsewhere mean it'll only be used by commercial/enterprise Windows-stack users who are already locked into some legacy workflow/data built around/glued to Excel. For example, financial users, or users who have some expensive license seat of some enterprise product(s). Means an even smaller subset of users.

We're saying the same thing.

Re: My thoughts on Python in Excel

#25

Post by bitwize »

mathnode wrote: post #2

Without interacting with it myself, none of this is surprising. I have used excel in the past, and I am a long term python user. But if you asked me today what I really wanted to make my life easier and ultimately a product or business better using only excel? I would ask for lua or scheme. I don’t need a batteries included environment embedded into a spreadsheet. I just want sane syntax for common functionality whic…

> I would ask for lua or scheme.

Scheme? Did somebody say... Scheme?

https://apexdatasolutions.com/home2/acce%CE%BBerate/

It's a paid addon, but still...

Re: My thoughts on Python in Excel

#27

Post by jimbokun »

superb_dev wrote: post #17
smcin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your personal use-case might prefer Lua or Scheme, but most casual Excel (or SQL) users are non-programmers so they won't. They'll want the equivalent of decently-documented macros or boilerplate they can easily and quickly use without modification. (One common Excel use-case will clearly be "import/munge lots of data from various sources, then pass it into some AI model, then process the output". Can't see people wr…

Python in excel is a feature I would only expect to be used by power users. Someone who spends a lot of time in excel. Calling these people “non-programmers” isn’t true, excel itself is a pretty esoteric programming language. I personally don’t think python is the problem here, but if their users can learn python they can certainly learn lua.

They could, but a lot more people already know Python than Lua.

Re: My thoughts on Python in Excel

#29

Post by dav43 »

doubloon wrote: post #14

"I don't want to learn the M language" i am baffled. power query / M is taking over the corporate world and its extremely, extremely useful. its one of the most useful things that nobody in open source world has tried to copy (that im aware of).

I haven’t seen it being used anywhere in big corporates (+20k employees) at all.

I attempted it once and stop as I found error checking impossible, source control impossible and ability to see code changes impossible - compared to a simple python script that is just text and can be source controlled.

Interested in a different opinion as maybe I missed something.

Re: My thoughts on Python in Excel

#30

Post by jimbokun »

bsder wrote: post #11

The big problem is that this is exactly backwards. I rarely want to access Python from my Excel. I quite often want to access Excel from my Python. A spreadsheet is a great GUI for a lot of things. A lot of people are employed creating "shitty version of Excel but can be driven from any of " Being able to easily drive Excel from an external Python program would make for a nice cross-platform application substrate.

Fascinating to think of Excel growing into a modern replacement for Visual Basic. The spreadsheet that becomes so important to the company it’s handed over to the software developers to make it into a real application is almost a meme at this point.

Being able to steadily enhance a spreadsheet into a real application without rewriting from scratch could be a real game changer.

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