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Power Fx: open-source now available

powerapps.microsoft.com

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Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#31

Post by TuringTest »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #28
maxpert wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complexity, humans are not good at complexity beyond certain levels. One good example of such model is in React + Redux story. Based on single variable your view might have 10/20 changes and to this day I see people debating what is the right way to do it (React hooks vs Redux is latest episode).

In my experience/opinion as a programmer, property-bound state tracking (where you say C = A + B, and changing A or B changes C) is easier to understand than push-based updating of C when you change either A or B. Property binding (FRP?) causes the exact set of values dependent on an input to change when the input changes, with no chance to forget (though you can still forget to register a change callback on C). But…

When you want to take different actions, you can use the Stream metaphor (a.k.a. Observables) instead of variable bindings.

Streams maintain the same functional reactive execution paradigm of spreadsheets and property bindings, but you can compose several of them into a new stream with complex conditional logic. You can use the streams as event propagators, and understand the program state as a series of successive updates every time a new event appears on the stream.

https://www.didierboelens.com/2018/08/reactive-programming-s...

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#32

Post by TuringTest »

cardosof wrote: post #8
pid-1 wrote: post #5

My non tech users are still catching up with Power Query. I sort of gave up forwarding news related to low code from MS, as every week there's something changing or being deprecated. Moreover, every time I tried to use anything related to the Power Platform (so I could teach to others) I ended up in a world of pain. Is anyone actually using Power Apps, etc... Successfully?

I too quit playing catch up with MS no code stuff - they change so much it's definitely not "fast iteration", it's "throw everything and see what sticks".

> I too quit playing catch up with MS no code stuff - they change so much

That might be different this time, though. Afaik it's the first time Microsoft releases a user-friendly reactive language as open source; all their previous tools in this field have been strictly proprietary.

Being open source, it can be maintained by its community of users without becoming abandoned, even if Microsoft loses interest in it.

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#33

Post by TuringTest »

spaceisballer wrote: post #18

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 at…

The most relevant use case I can think for reactive programming is data transformation between formats.

Say you have two departments that need to share data, but their data stores are structured in different ways. You can build an automated process that reads data from the first data pool and converts it into the format needed at the second pool, where the other department can use it.

This is a quite common use case in machine learning for example, where data from numerous different sources need to be stored in a centralized pool ('data lake') where the ML process can analyze it to build predictions.

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#34

Post by tonyedgecombe »

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.

When it is in their commercial interest to do so. Which in the case of Windows and Office is probably never.

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#35

Post by Hjfrf »

TuringTest wrote: post #33
spaceisballer wrote: post #18

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 at…

The most relevant use case I can think for reactive programming is data transformation between formats. Say you have two departments that need to share data, but their data stores are structured in different ways. You can build an automated process that reads data from the first data pool and converts it into the format needed at the second pool, where the other department can use it. This is a quite common use case…

Microsoft already offers several tools for that.

It feels like they're just throwing out new programming languages for no reason sometimes.

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#37

Post by paradice »

pid-1 wrote: post #5

My non tech users are still catching up with Power Query. I sort of gave up forwarding news related to low code from MS, as every week there's something changing or being deprecated. Moreover, every time I tried to use anything related to the Power Platform (so I could teach to others) I ended up in a world of pain. Is anyone actually using Power Apps, etc... Successfully?

I use it at work together with Azure Functions. Power Apps is great for small functionalities you need for Azure resources. My latest example is a logic app that triggers an Azure DevOps release. When I trigger this logic app via HTTP I also pass some parameters that the release definition expects.

Another example I made is to get Microsoft Forms answers that users submitted straight into a SQL Server DB. You literally cannot programmatically get the answers in any other way, by design. Its either logic app component or export to XLSX.

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#38

Post by mathnmusic »

TuringTest wrote: post #32
cardosof wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too quit playing catch up with MS no code stuff - they change so much it's definitely not "fast iteration", it's "throw everything and see what sticks".

> I too quit playing catch up with MS no code stuff - they change so much That might be different this time, though. Afaik it's the first time Microsoft releases a user-friendly reactive language as open source; all their previous tools in this field have been strictly proprietary. Being open source, it can be maintained by its community of users without becoming abandoned, even if Microsoft loses interest in it.

Open source != Open governance. Consider Signal as an example. It's open-source but there's no developer "community".

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#39

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

mathnmusic wrote: post #38
TuringTest wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I too quit playing catch up with MS no code stuff - they change so much That might be different this time, though. Afaik it's the first time Microsoft releases a user-friendly reactive language as open source; all their previous tools in this field have been strictly proprietary. Being open source, it can be maintained by its community of users without becoming abandoned, even if Microsoft loses interest in it.

Open source != Open governance. Consider Signal as an example. It's open-source but there's no developer "community".

SOURCE OPEN. sigh

Re: Power Fx: open-source now available

#40

Post by dgudkov »

fragmede wrote: post #14
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 t…

Good point. Excel is no more low-code than SQL.
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