Correction. Excel DOES NOT HAVE PYTHON. Your python is sent to Microsoft's cloud instance of Python and the result there is sent back to your Excel sheet. No actual python is being executed on your machine.
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
46 points (100.0% liked)
Programming
13418 readers
6 users here now
All things programming and coding related. Subcommunity of Technology.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
So it's sending it up to the big snake in the sky?
Or you know, use a non-proprietary format like CSV and analyze your data in any language you damn well please.
Excel can't import a CSV file reliably though - and neither can any other spreadsheet software I've ever tested. They have problems with dates, numeric values, etc.
The only reliable way to work with CSV is in a programming language of your choice or a plain text editor.
Yeah, on their cloud. LoL
An important detail is that Microsoft executes your code in their cloud, which for privacy reasons alone is extremely questionable.
So it wont work if you are ever offline or have internet problems etc.
Terrible Design
There’s no way I’ll ever use this, mostly because good luck trying to open that spreadsheet later.
I read somewhere that this required connecting to Microsoft's cloud? Is that true?
It is. So not really that great, imo. Just another rent seeking behavior to force a current subscription.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certain it scratches an itch many people have, just the fact they put it in the cloud is a hell of a lot of needless complexity and antiuser.
Didn't LibreOffice Calc have this like... a decade ago?
LibreOffice already had JS
... and Python that actually gets executed on your machine, not someone else's machine (ie the cloud).
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't that something entirely different? This is python in a cell of a spreadsheet, which could be really good, but what you linked seems to be for macros, same as excel's VBA
Good point, that's another difference between the two. Although you can probably achieve the same result with both.
Not depending on the cloud processing your data is more important in my opinion.
Python in a spreadsheet would be so helpful, abstracting it out to macros less so. Better than making them in VBA I'm sure, but still not the same thing.
I'm very basic, more thinking about stuff like using Python f-strings and string formatting vs excels formatting.
goddamn now i gotta learn python to stay ahead in my office job? shit...
Do you need to? I feel like learning Python wouldn't give much benefit here, unless you're already using Excel to create applications. In that case, learning Python might let you start making applications that better suit your needs.
Nah I was kind of joking. I do feel like understanding Excel really well has helped me stay ahead of my coworkers, but obviously people who can't figure out Excel won't be figuring out python anytime soon.
Learning python could be handy if you ever wanted a career change into a software developer :)
Good I’m staying away from both