251–260 of 455 posts
For this feature, there's no question that providing it in the cloud is much, much better for security. Microsoft can now execute the Python code in Firecracker VMs which provide much better sandboxing than your local PC could.
On the meanwhile, just a few threads ago there was a (quite fair) browser benchmark where Chrome comes up on top on almost every test. People in the comments instantly rushes in proclaiming how proud they are for using Firefox even if it is technically inferior, solely because it is not owned by Google.
What's up with this divide? Firefox user, btw.
This was a nice surprise to see today as an Ex-Excel developer who worked on trying to bring Python to Excel (and, I guess, failing ;)). 7+ years ago I had the option of leaving the Excel team. My then boss’s boss knew I had an interest in bringing Python to Excel and offered me a chance to tackle it if I chose to stay. What was meant to be a 6 month project turned into a ~3 year project, the Python part faded away a…
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…
> 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…
Almost all these tools support exporting to Excel or CSV, so they can do whatever they want in Excel after that.
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> This means that the process is eternally tied to the cloud now. "You will own nothing, and you will be happy" has followed us to... spreadsheets? We can't even own the things we're wageslaving away at our desk for.
> We can't even own the things we're wageslaving away at our desk for. But we never owned those things we're wageslaving away at our desk for, that's why its called wageslaving. Whether our employers own them or rent them seems pretty immaterial.
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Excel makes a total mess of many kinds of imports, assuming they are dates when they are not or assuming US vs UK formats dates etc. https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam... However, to my eyes, and probably most people, 20230822090811 does not look like a "date string", it's a number. It's correct to display it as scientific notation if it's too many digits to fit into the width of a cell. Ple…
Are you saying that excel does preserve digits? I must be doing something very wrong (entirely possible), cause once the document is saved, the digits are gone.
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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.
>> Hi I work on Excel, can you write a summary of why that's important to you and send it to How out of touch with the real world is the Excel team?
It's interesting how aggresively enthusiastic HN are about Excel when it comes to discussions about Excel vs. open-source alternatives. Any mention of alternatives are quickly and aggresively shot down, ocassionally to the point of personal attacks (if you're satisfied with LibreOffice you don't have real job, etc.). On the meanwhile, just a few threads ago there was a (quite fair) browser benchmark where Chrome come…
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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
Financial calculations are also sometimes already used to doing math in integral pennies (or eighths of a penny) for performance/storage reasons. That works just fine with one BigInt. Or you can build arbitrary-precision rationals from just two BigInts. (There are some JS libraries out there already for that.)
Even if we stipulate that users will be cognizant of floating point limitations and convert everything to integers, JS still requires all literals to be suffixed with n to avoid silently losing precision when integral values exceed 2*52.