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Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

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Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#41

Post by abenga »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #26
cardamomo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A lot of people who use excel heavily are not really “programmers” and don’t have strong fundamentals or an appetite to manage their own software stack. This also simplifies development on MS end by only needing to validate a single python version.

Then they should embed the supported version of python in Excel and manage it automatically for them. This can be validated with Excel before release.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#43

Post by pipo234 »

garyclarke27 wrote: post #12

Why does Excel need to run Python calculations in the Cloud? I think I'll stick to VBA. Javascript in Excel would be nice. Even better would be native SQL.

Maybe this is not so much about bringing Python to Excel, more about bringing Excel to Python. But only if you do it the way Microsoft wants you to.

As with BASIC morphing into VisualBasic and VBA you lure (beginning) python programmers into Excel. Ultimately those developers will understand and appreciate less and less of vanilla python REPL, jupyter, scripts, etc. And... Welcome to Microsoft's world.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#44

Post by mcdonje »

starquake wrote: post #28

I'm a developer. People have often come to me with Excel sheets that were really slow because it was just too much for Excel. Almost all of the times IMHO a specific solution should have been developed for it. I'm curious to see if this makes it better or actually worse.

Conway's law. Unless those people have devs or data engineers embedded in their group, they're going to keep on with less than ideal solutions. Management will accept those inefficient solutions because they don't come with dev pricetags.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#45

Post by codetrotter »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #17
bigfudge wrote: post #2

If this is true then it will be amazing and very widely adopted. Pandas in Excel would be cool. Fingers crossed.

Why? Libreoffice calc had python for years now and nobody cared: https://help.libreoffice.org/6.3/en-US/text/sbasic/python/py...

Because the world runs Excel, not LibreOffice Calc.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#46

Post by layer8 »

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…

It sort of makes sense to limit it to the cloud, because making Python an integral part of the Excel file format would reduce its portability and introduce all sorts of compatibility headaches going forward.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#47

Post by pasc1878 »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #17
bigfudge wrote: post #2

If this is true then it will be amazing and very widely adopted. Pandas in Excel would be cool. Fingers crossed.

Why? Libreoffice calc had python for years now and nobody cared: https://help.libreoffice.org/6.3/en-US/text/sbasic/python/py...

Beacuse anyone with a budget had Excel already - and had to use Excel to be able to use other peoples' spreadsheets. LibreOffice is not bug compatible with Excel.

Look what Excel had tro do to replace Lotus 1-2-3. Including making 1900 a leap year beacuse Lotus had the error.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#48

Post by giaour »

garyclarke27 wrote: post #12

Why does Excel need to run Python calculations in the Cloud? I think I'll stick to VBA. Javascript in Excel would be nice. Even better would be native SQL.

> 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 kind of number anybody actually needs

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#49

Post by inglor »

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…

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.

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