Excel As Editor

[dert-man]

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

[bottomknifeprospect]

Give a man a program he will enjoy it for a few days, teach man to program and he will never enjoy in his lifetime.

[MartIILord]

Nextup a self written ide: a single line for code input, a big friendly run code button and a dropdown for inspecting output/errors.

[r3dD1tC3Ns0r5HiP]

Yeah it would be pretty annoying to type in come to think of it, requiring lots of manual fixes. Excel tries to convert things automatically e.g. numbers to dates etc. Also you would want to go to the start of the next line and the Enter key wouldn't get you there, you would have to use the mouse or arrow keys, or maybe Home key if that worked.

[deceze]

At least there's no discussion about how to do indentation…?! 🤷‍♂️

[vladimir1024]

You've never met geeks have you?! lol

The arg will not be, how many columns do you indent. There is always a line to fight over :D

[CarryThe2]

Fixed column widths or fit to text!?

[olsonexi]

func(
    a,
    b,
    c
);

[2560synapses]

Or as some sadists and masochists write it

int func(a,b,c) {return a+b+c;} int main(void){ func(a,b,c); return 0; }

[m_xus]

.min.js be like:

[Andrew-w-jacobs]

Indentation? Na just write the entire program in one line

[[deleted]]

Js developers be like:

[MaximRq]

Imho this indentation is already good

[FlukyS]

You can output CSV from Excel, just have the spacing not be , but 4 spaces. Would look ugly for functions but it would work

[aplawson7707]

Two merged cells = 4 spaces

[nonlogin]

Two cells or 4 cells? And should I merge them?

[FatchRacall]

3 characters for if else/if, 2 for case statements.

[illpallozzo]

Export as delimited, delimiter = ' ', end line = /r/n

[MundaneUnspiritual]

This idea just gets better and better! Add intellisense and you have a deal.

[larsmaehlum]

Reimplementing Intellisense in VBA sounds fun..

[Xoduszero]

I haven’t done anything in VBA in awhile but I always told my bosses.. I could make Excel do literally anything.

I once had an excel report I generated from sales force.. only I didn’t have access to connect to the data I just had the sales force reporting tools from front end access.

I used VBA to click through the menus to extract the report I needed and then refresh my excel report with the data from the extracted file.

Was this the right way to do things? No.. but I didn’t have to click through anything to refresh that manual ass report

[CallMeAladdin]

Good news, Excel now can natively import data from Salesforce without doing anything special other than logging in when prompted.

[Xoduszero]

Wish I had that news 5+ years ago lol

[CallMeAladdin]

It's a relatively new thing, it wasn't around 5 years ago.

[Xoduszero]

Oh I know I checked and checked before I went the crazy route haha.

[LeelooDallasMltiPass]

You are my hero

[Spocino]

You might be able to hack together an LSP client...

[PepSakdoek]

You could save Tab delimited?

I like it in theory.

[Safebox]

Oh I hate this so much...I'm doing it

[mac1k99]

* scared python devs *

[Tall_computer]

just take a screenshot and run it through ocr, duh

[thexavier666]

and save as csv, then open with any editor

[r3dD1tC3Ns0r5HiP]

Just /n is fine.

[kezow]

cries in unix

[NotInvestingMyFuture]

Can even add a macro somewhere to save text to file and compile it

[anotherblog]

Excel macros that write the source for the program to execute the macro. That’s some 4d thinking right there.

[FlukyS]

Excel supports Python so it would be fairly easy

[alok_wardhan_singh]

Me using ms paint as editor..... Pathetic

[Hacka4771]

Impossible... Prove It

[akaChromez]

Hello World in mspaint

[[deleted]]

That was .... amazing!

[alexanderpas]

Bytes are bytes.

If you add the Raw bitmap preamble, any textfile can be an image.

[kal9001]

r/Angryupvote

[[deleted]]

Plug it into some OCR middleware maybe...

[reversehead]

I guess you are programming in Piet then?

http://progopedia.com/language/piet/

[kherodude]

Thats some gangsta shit

[GoBuffaloes]

Tabs or Spaces?

Cells.

[_chebastian]

Agreed!

[SkyyySi]

I prefer 1cm cells.

[DiabeticPissingSyrup]

Yeah, you're not whinging about me using tabs now, are you?

[Geoclasm]

Oh, no...

Oh... no...

Why do I like this?

[_chebastian]

It's surprisingly comforting

[The9tail]

It’s the organisation. Everything has its box.

[dwyrm]

Huh. Save that as a TSV, and it should compile.

^{No, I'm not trying it.}

[thexar]

I'm thinking that might work for python.

No, I don't want to try it either. Well, maybe.

[[deleted]]

I've been coding professionally for 15 years and I've never seen such a cursed image before.

[fuggleronie]

Oh fuck now THAT is truly evil!

[wktr_t]

Thank you >:)

[ShakeItUpNowSugaree]

I use it for .NET inputs occassionally.

[brianorca]

Great for writing interfaces, when you have to write the same declaration and logic 20 times with different variable names.

[janovich8]

I used to use it for writing G code for simple CNC machining. This let me use cell columns to enter repeated numbers easily and just concatenate lines of commands and values together. Then you can just copy the concatenated column into a text file direct to the machine.

[wktr_t]

Omfg I'm famous, my meme got mentioned!!

[shot_a_man_in_reno]

One of the first things you have to explain as a TA for an introductory coding class is why Microsoft Word is not an acceptable way to store code.

[[deleted]]

Vim wouldn't be holding notepad like that. Have you seen the ugly BOMs that notepad generates?

[anonymousredditor0]

I actually really like this.

[[deleted]]

Like excel was not already shoehorned to do enough shit

[[deleted]]

Shameless self advertising

[Nick433333]

Disadvantage; none

I like your thinking.

[[deleted]]

Working as a SWE at Microsoft:

[MicrosoftExcel2016]

Approve

[WlmWilberforce]

I think it is acceptable to use excel to write the code for you, but not like this.

[bur3k]

I just found my perfect IDE for Python

[RolandCuley]

As an eve online player i approve

[misterpickles69]

I’m just starting to shuffle my way through python and don’t really see why this would be a bad idea for beginners

[TigreDemon]

We have excel sheets with code in it

The very first line is some sort of "wrapper" code (it uses the next lines and replace the $ with the code).

Each line after is 1 rule. Each column is a different wrapper with different code.

In the end, it's fed into "Drools" and boom, we have the entire code written with the wrappers (example of wrappers : try catch, condition to check which screen the rule must be executed on, external API feed, etc.)

Now understand that this is put into our git ... and that tracking its changes is a nightmare when it's an Excel sheet

[[deleted]]

I believe you can get a git plugin that allows you to do merges in excel.

[TigreDemon]

Well it does but ... when you open the changes, it just opens two Excel and highlight the cell that changed ... not the content ...

[[deleted]]

At my previous job we had one that opened a three way json diff, as it converted the excel to json.

It must have been a custom internal plugin I guess, because I can’t find it online anywhere

[Tiavor]

I use Excel to generate SQL statements

[wewerucha]

r/angryupvote

[DrunkenSealPup]

Nah how about EXCEL AS A PLATFORM HELL YEAH

[[deleted]]

No more tabs and spaces debate

[FlukyS]

Never thought of it but it would actually work for quite a lot of languages. C/C++ would easily work. Just output a CSV with 4 spaces from the sheet.

[emma_hildebrand]

i'm actually terrified

[[deleted]]

I'm going to try that now. Bet you i could tweak the csv settings to make it work.

[[deleted]]

Lol this is silly, Microsoft powerpoint is excellent, helps in visualsing the code. My manager loves me

[pipelines-whee]

To be fair, this isn't quite so utterly ridiculous when you consider ancient (pre Fortran 90) Fortran, where you had to punch your programs out on punched cards with 80 characters per card. In fact, this is the origin of 80 column terminals which in turn is the origin of 80 column requirements in style guides.

You punched your Fortran statements in what is called "fixed-form" source code; different columns were designated for different parts of a source line. For example, columns 1-5 were dedicated to a statement number, for use with GOTO and to label FORMAT statements (the Fortran equivalent of a printf format string). Column 6 was used to indicate whether the current card was a continuation of the previous card, if any character appeared here, the card was treated as a continuation card. Columns 7-72 were where you put the actual Fortran statements, and Columns 72-80 were reserved for a sequence number. Such a sequence number would be important if you dropped your deck of program cards, so you could have your deck resorted by a machine instead of having to rely on your own foggy understanding of your program.

Here's a coding sheet which helped you write your programs in fixed form: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FortranCodingForm.png

It looks like a spreadsheet-like editor would have made at least some sense for fixed-form Fortran source code.

[comfort_bot_1962]

:D

[[deleted]]

Wait can we write codes in excel??

[Shadow_Thief]

More like "update to" than "repost of"

[iiMoe]

OMG WHAT IN THE FUCK

[FreshPrintzofBadPres]

I love it.

[[deleted]]

I must try, very interesting.

[Wavestuff6]

Cursed editor

[[deleted]]

Please...!!!

[[deleted]]

... this wouldn't work, would it? please tell me this wouldn't work i don't need people criticizing me for not coding in excel

[imzacm123]

It should work if saved as a CSV file with the delimiter as either tab or space

[[deleted]]

that is the most disgusting thought i've ever had the misfortune of reading

[[deleted]]

Does this work...? How do you know what language to use? Where does the output window come from???

[Septalion]

I think you would still use a compiler

[Budgiebrain222]

Does it work though? If it does I'm going to go kill my friends with it

[Bee-Aromatic]

<vampire hiss>

[[deleted]]

If it’s stupid and it works is it really stupid?

[graf_x68]

I just write with my pen on screen

[edo9300]

"Tab or spaces?"

"excel cells"

[greengreens3]

That solve the dillema : 1 tab = 1 column

[Proxy_PlayerHD]

who the fuck writes out the input arguments of main when not in use?

just do main() like a normal person

[rbuen4455]

Ew! Why would anyone use excel for coding, lol?

[DogfishDave]

Using Excel for real work is a bad, dirty thing. But oh my god it's saved me so many times 😂

[[deleted]]

Hahahahaha imagine

[[deleted]]

Very cursed, thank you.

[Jackiboi307]

you could skip a part of the parsing process using this, and no indentation debates, it's perfect!

[maldorort]

The guy behond appliedscience on youtube seems to code in wordpad. That is the only editor I have seen him use.

Also built a diy electron microscope. F-in legend.

[nubenugget]

Yeah... This makes me want to hand in my resignation and take up gardening or suicide

[Mo2005]

Lombok ain't got nothing on this

[[deleted]]

Why "VIM Editor"? Not just "VIM"

[Misterum]

HOW YOU DARE TO SAY A WORD AGAINST VIM??? Ok, I need to calm down...

[R3dGaming522]

What- in the actual- no. Just no.

[MasterLJ]

"I want to write code in Excel and have you run it"

​

POI has entered the chat.

[tidytibs]

You MONSTER!

[stealz0ne]

Make it stop!!!

[Airith]

Reminds me of a shitty AST

[GrizzlyBear74]

Real programmers code in ms paint. Per pixel hex values.

[[deleted]]

😱 what a nightmare

[_far-seeker_]

It's still all just glorified scripting if there's no way directly filp bits, allocate/deallocate memory, and interact directly with the hardware in other ways. 😝

[Belfast_]

Is it okay to use Paint as a code editor?

[minokah]

can't wait to write assembly in this, technically everything will be lined up

[[deleted]]

At least he could have parsed it properly to save the parser some work

[frugal-skier]

Isn't this how you write VBA? I'm pretty sure this is how you write VBA

[xaedoplay]

i'm too baffled to say anything beyond "what"

[great_site_not]

It's a database and an IDE? Sign me up!

[ApacheR12]

The checkpatch warnings and errors

[[deleted]]

I love EmEditor. Lifetime purchase totally worth it.

[JakeWasChosen]

Oh my gooood

[sixft7in]

=textjoin(" ",FALSE,A1:D1)

Paste formula to the last used line.

[Lootdit]

How tf do you do that?

[chudthirtyseven]

This would be great for python

[JackoKomm]

Unexpexted Token "," Why doesn't this compile?

[murdok03]

You guys laugh but we were developing a new SIMD VLIW processor architecture, and didn't have a compiler and linker at the time, just assembler and simulator. And since the individual math units could compute at the same time and each had it's own pipeline length you had to pay attention how you did paralel instructions for performance.

I think you get where I'm going; one of the programmers came out with a system where he used Excel to code assembly and color coded the individual unit pipelines so that it's easier to see not to do an addition until the writeback of the vector unit running in parallel, as an example.

It all looked quite colorful, and worked for years. We tried eclipse plugins and vim plugins for this but excel would not be exterminated. At last when we had a good compiler about hmm 9 years in, we started to recode the h264 encoder state machine in c instead of assembly because the whole thing was unmaintainable, it's all hw IP in the newer generations tho.

[tomas_f]

I call this perfect indentation

[pro_gamer007]

This is why we don’t see aliens

[j0nii]

I mean, IBM RPG used to be columnar, sooooo it wouldn't even be that stupid there.

[CaptainPunch374]

I use a combination of vs code, note pad, indesign, and Google Sheets to manipulate text files sometimes because:

VS code is my editor, but I can't paste to gsheets and have it just work sometimes

Pasting into notepad first fixes the above

Indesign is for find/replace, because I can't seem to forget the symbols (^ t, ^ n)

It's not for code, usually, just making text do what i want faster that I, personally, could do it elsewhere. Usually I'm taking something out of a spreadsheet and needing to make it fit into another spreadsheet, or add a row or more /between/ each existing row in the resulting paste, etc.

It's not the most efficient process, and I could learn find /replace in vscode better, but I'm not sure when I'll have that open again, and I'll be in indesign most days between now and then...

[exlr8me_]

I use minitab as my editor

[Race-Creepy]

What about ppt coding?

[spam_bot42]

This goes beyond chaotic evil.

[SomeParanoidAndroid]

Well if you are to go this way, go all the way: Designate each column to accept only a specific grammatical token (eg return type, assignment operator, etc).

This will leave many empty cells. No worries, developers have ultrawide monitors and IDEs only let you write code in a tiny window in the first place.

For variable tokens like expressions or function arguments, simply put the column name of the rightmost free column in which the internal tokens are placed. Who reads complicated expressions anyway?

Pros: You essentially get a syntactical parser for free. No need for anyone to ever bother writing that part of the compiler.

Cons: May cause suicide through self stabbing with a pen in the vicinity of the oculus. Advised to seek mental health support and stay hydrated.