285
Microsoft announces Python formulas in Excel... which have to get sent to the cloud
(techcommunity.microsoft.com)
Damn they found a way to make python slower
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
285 points (96.1% liked)
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That made a python interface wrapper arround VB Script.
Wow, Microsoft is now copying LibreOffice. Who could have guesses?
The difference is Microsoft will feed your scripts into training its AI.
Microsoft is stupid, but not too stupid to realize that Excel users are generally tech-illiterate and most of them will produce garbage code.
Gpt/Bing attempts at python code for excel lmao, full circle, ai training on itself
I don't get it. Why I need cloud to run Python scripts which can be done locally? Installing Python isn't hard and MS can bundle it as a library with Office either.
This sounds like a security check. Our liability and ransomware insurance both require scripts to be turned off for excel and word.
I believe security threats can be mitigated locally without resorts to cloud.
Actually, one can argue using cloud is less secure because there is a risk of sensitive data leaked out of cooperate network.
Cloud doesn’t have access to local drives…but in this day and age, python could be containerized or sandboxed. Sounds messy though.
You could argue that, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Microsoft has a massive amount of resources to throw at securing their environment, whereas most businesses simply don't have the ability to field a dedicated security team. The solution many reach is to offload risk to your software vendor, in this case Microsoft. Then, if there is data lost, it's Microsoft's fault, and it's their problem to fix, too. It's not ideal, but it's the world we're living in.
I've been asking this for every other cloud service - either companies are jumping on the 10-year-old bandwagon or want to collect data for AI training purposes in a way you cannot just disable in the settings. And of course you cannot self-host your own server.
Richard Stallman on Service as a Software Substitute:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
When you save your doc to one drive then you can access it from the web version of office. That's the reason they've been encouraging developers to write add-ins that run from the cloud. I'm guessing that this is for similar reasons
You can also access docs by uploading it to the web version of office. Correct me if I'm wrong but last I remembered add-ins don't choose between desktop and web.
Not everyone has an opportunity to work with Python in their work environment. I'm on the "business" side of the company, capable of doing most of programming stuff myself (Python, C#, SQL, etc.), whereas only "IT" people can work with the proper compileable code. And I'm left out working with VBA macros, or ask IT to write a script for me, which will take 1 year to develop. This change now will improve my local productivity for sure.
This issue isn't about authoring the script, is about why it needs to execute on the cloud rather locally.
Does anyone not think Microsoft is going to use all their cloud data for training language models?
"We promise not to" doesn't seem realistic to me. Proving they used it is impossible.
“We promise not to”
Where did you quote this from? I think they won't care, just like GitHub Copilot, or it will be an opt-out feature.
This is inside out programming. I want my code to read data files, not my data files to contain code.
The first example is how to take cells in the sheet and make a data frame in an Excel equation. That's easy, pandas.read_excel(): no clound needed, no need to hunt through cells of a sheet to find your code.
time to mine monero on their servers
microsoft ad please remove
lazy social obviously didn’t read the article
Checks out