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Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

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Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

#71

Post by Closi »

perl4ever wrote: post #38
greggyb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the point of this function, when Excel already has Power Query. Because Power Query is not a spreadsheet application, and has some much more severe performance cliffs than Excel proper does.

To you and easton, my point is that even if Power Query has shortcomings, it's clearly the best thing to build on and improve, assuming VBA is dying a slow death and can't be revived. Even if, like, you wanted to make another separate language, it should still resemble Power Query, only better. I don't think people at Microsoft are looking at Excel as a whole, like lost souls squatting in a mansion and building sand…

PowerQuery isn’t a replacement for excel though - it’s a data preprocessing tool for analysts.

It’s not going to replace functionality of core spreadsheet-based excel for accountants, for instance, who typically won’t have a use for PowerQuery as their data is structured differently.

Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

#72

Post by peterkelly »

This is great and all, but it struck me that only Microsoft could come up with phrases like "LAMBDA is available to members of the Insiders: Beta program" and "LAMBDA complements the March 2020 release of LET". It sounds like something someone might write in a parody press release on comp.lang.scheme 30 years ago.

Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

#73

Post by maweki »

I always thought the Excel computational model was elegant and useful as it didn't allow for non-termination.

Now they lose termination for the use case where someone knows how to program but can't or won't program in some "normal" programming language.

Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

#74

Post by bickeringyokel »

Dangeranger wrote: post #54
willhslade wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take everything in the world. Every physical piece. Break it into the smallest slice you care to: (atoms, quarks, whatever). The count of those things is bounded. It's a huge number, but it's finite. Infinity is not a real concept, it's imaging that there is no number that can be bounded.

Maybe, there are hypothesis’ that the Universe is infinite. The observable Universe is finite.

If the universe is infinite, Then the observable universe is only as finite as the length of your life and capability to traverse through space.

Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

#75

Post by TuringTest »

oneplane wrote: post #49

Funny how the top of the article starts with "custom functions without code" and then immediately shows code. I get that calling code by its name can make it sound scary, but this whole notion of it being 'easy because it is not code' seems to be a big fat lie for comfort. Same goes for the magic no-code systems where code is replaced with 'expressions' or graphical 'workflows' which essentially is exactly the same t…

There is one discipline which truly allows defining functions without code: Programming By Example[1]. It is particularly useful in data wrangling, at the 'Transform' part of ETL.

Microsoft has some initiatives exploring it[2] (including the limited autocomplete in Excel as a toy version of the concept), but this is not it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_by_example

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...

Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

#76

Post by captainmuon »

This is almost what I always wanted, but it feels a bit bolted on to be honest. I don't like that you have to put a complex nested function in one cell, rather than using multiple cells with temporary results. While this allows you to concatenate Excel functions, I think it doesn't allow you to write a function in "idiomatic" Excel. If I had to implement functions in Excel, I would use one of two strategies:

- You have a special area or special kind of sheet, where some cells are inputs, one is output, and all others are used for temporary calculation

or:

- You define your calculation as usual, in B5: = 10*A5 - then in C5:

    =MYLAMBDA(B5; A5)(3)
Meaning: Take the formula in B5, treat A5 as an argument, and return a function. Then call this function with the argument 3.

The benefit of this? You can have an area in your sheet where the user can enter formulas and multi-cell-calculations, not just numbers, and they are applied elsewhere.

Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

#77

Post by unhammer »

teraflop wrote: post #5

The blog post's title is an homage to a series of papers from the 70s, which formulated the Scheme programming language and the beginnings of what we now know as "functional programming". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Scheme_programm...

The authors of the post have both been central to Haskell's development, among other PL things – I'm guessing they've read them all :)

Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

#78

Post by solatic »

Naive but serious question: couldn't Excel create a special / hidden sheet for lambda functions, thereby allowing them to be easily written on multiple lines, with some kind of standard formatting, then calling a lambda from a cell would be of the form:

=LAMBDA(global_function_name, [cell_input_1, cell_input_2, ...])

Wouldn't this be a cleaner design? Trying to deal with cells whose formulas are way too long to be put in a single cell is Excel's Achilles Heel (and a footgun that you are nearly guaranteed to enounter sooner rather than later). This LAMBDA proposal as written seems to exacerbate that problem, not improve it.

Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

#79

Post by chrisseaton »

addicted wrote: post #69
oneplane wrote: post #49

Funny how the top of the article starts with "custom functions without code" and then immediately shows code. I get that calling code by its name can make it sound scary, but this whole notion of it being 'easy because it is not code' seems to be a big fat lie for comfort. Same goes for the magic no-code systems where code is replaced with 'expressions' or graphical 'workflows' which essentially is exactly the same t…

Where’s the immediate code? I think those are basically Excel formulas, which in context, are not what Excel users would consider “code”.

What do you think is the difference between Excel formulas and code?

Re: Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

#80

Post by qwertox »

chrisseaton wrote: post #79
addicted wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s the immediate code? I think those are basically Excel formulas, which in context, are not what Excel users would consider “code”.

What do you think is the difference between Excel formulas and code?

Using an inbuilt Excel formula vs creating a formula with VBA?
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