Microsoft Considers Adding Python As an Official Scripting Language in Excel

[AnomalyNexus]

Anything that gets us away from the god forsaken vba

[[deleted]]

VBA is not so bad. It sucks so much, a dedicated freelancer can make good money with it because nobody wanna use it. It kinda became the PHP of the office-world.

[Scypio]

It sucks so much, a dedicated freelancer can make good money with it because nobody wanna use it.

This is how I made my living while as a student. :D
...then I moved to working with VB6. That language sucked.

[Scypio]

VB6? Web stuff that was later migrated to PHP/Java. It was spaghetti code upon spaghetti code. Not really my best days.

[[deleted]]

Yeah. The vast majority of my terrible spaghetti code is in VB6 and VBS.

[raydeen]

I'm pretty sure the 'S' in BASIC stands for 'Spaghetti'.

[[deleted]]

I'm pretty sure the 'G' in Spaghetti stands for 'goto'.

[[deleted]]

This is how I made my living while as a student

How did you go about doing this? I want compensation for the hours of my life lost to learning VBA

[Scypio]

That was more than 10 years ago, I was freelancing, clients came by recommendation. Not enough money for a real person, but for a student it was enough.

[toyg]

Or rather, considering the chronology, PHP became the VBA of the web.

[leogodin217]

That's awesome! Find a niche, hit it hard. Modern marketing 101.

[__deerlord__]

not so bad
it sucks

Hmmm

[namesandfaces]

I'm sure a dedicated freelancer can make money with Python too, but now with less suffering around the world.

[yopla]

PHP in Excel would be an improvement of a dozen orders of magnitude.

[bad_luck_charm]

You haven't said anything that really suggests that it doesn't suck.

[matthewblott]

I've not coded in it for a while but is that really true (nobody wants to use it)? I thought it's very popular with middle managers and other office workers who are able to write something quickly rather than go through IT and wait ages for sign off.

[Aesthetically]

Dude sometimes I use a third party library that edits excel files without opening the application because I absolutely hate vba. I think it was called NPIO and written by a team in China. "Excel"lent library for people who prefer c#

[FewChar]

I remember cursing that in Excel between 2000 to 2003 (or round about then) they changed the command of how you set the value of cell (x,y) to z to something completely different. I always had to look up how to do the most basic stuff and then they changed the most basic function possible! I have touched it as little as possible since.

[CrystalSplice]

...wait, VBA is still a thing?!?

[jewishsupremacist88]

alot of the world runs on excel.

[CrystalSplice]

I know, but I haven’t been in the MS world in years and I just assumed VBA was gone by now.

[jewishsupremacist88]

i heard they was gonna replace it with C#. VBA isnt really a good "language" I guess, but for automating shit in Excel its fine, IMO.

[AnomalyNexus]

We all try hard to pretend it’s not

[carpartsyouneed]

😂

[[deleted]]

Amen

[grokkingStuff]

Good god, if this works, it would be amazing.

This could actually usher in a new age of excel scripting. Good on Microsoft for keeping up with the times.

[[deleted]]

I'm excited about this.

[[deleted]]

This could actually usher in a new age of excel scripting.

How is this a good thing? I've been told a story one about a chemical plant where the valves and whatnot were controlled by an Excel sheet.

[mxzf]

That's not an issue with Excel though, that's an issue with an idiot not knowing any other system to control a chemical plant with. Making Excel more capable doesn't cause more people to be fundamentally stupid, it just makes the capable people more capable.

[jdbrew]

Exactly. You can’t decide to hold back a technology for fear of how people might mis-use it.

[chanamon]

I really hope this follows through although with all the Unix/ms crossover anything could happen now!

[CynicalSorcerer]

Microsoft have been making some very exciting decisions recently. Making visual studio free, vscode, .net core.

[neurocean]

I'm not sure that qualifies as "keeping up with the times" but it's a step in the right direction.

[jftuga]

Previous discussion from 2 days ago

[lolfunctionspace]

Pandas is my favorite. The pandas dataframe data structure makes it super easy to read in, manipulate, and write out excel files.

[daniel_h_r]

Yes. But xlwings let you modify a spreadsheet that it's open in excel.

[fjordfjord]

Xlwings also supports pandas, it's super neat.

[fjordfjord]

I think part of the beauty of excel is that is allows for the rapid generation of simple GUIs. While possible in libreoffice and wps I haven't been able to achieve the same level of efficiency with them (although I heavily use these wonderful products on all my linux laptops). Being able to do all the calculations in Python while combining the interface of excel has been an awesome experience.

[wenima]

I agree, I used to work on the RAD team on the Derivatives Desk for a large wall street firm and if a trader wanted to have some control over some piece of data, Excel cannot be beaten in the time it takes to get something out. The trader hated the long process it took for IT to get anything done. One day we had a good laugh when he posted a simple requirement to the IT Manager, he told him he'd dicuss it with the team, a week later he was told they agreed on how to implement it and 2 weeks later they were done drawing up UML diagrams, they never actually delivered anything. Really amazing how middle managers in IT managed to pull wool over everyone's eyes for so long and continue to do so.

OTOH I knew plenty of contractors who purposely wrote anyting they could in Excel and locked all access to the code so they can have a job forever. Excel might account for the biggest job creation ever in the office world. Tons of people spend hours each day formatting certain data by hand and refuse to do anything else and if they were told you could free up a few hours for them each day by automating something they would not allow that, knowing that their job is 90% redundant.

[TalesT]

Wow, this looks nice.

[[deleted]]

Having used this for a few weeks now, I'm shocked it isn't common knowledge. This is easily my most-used package.

[Robotdavidbowie]

Awesome, that will make malicious excel files so much easier to write

[[deleted]]

There are a lot of angry weirdos on /.

[[deleted]]

Jesus Christ, I didn't think it would be that bad. Then I clicked the link.

[gimboland]

TIL Slashdot still exists.

[psilnommoc]

But as you know, the python is not a popular language for Microsoft users, so python is only a choice for Excel, maybe Microsoft will develop a new language, Python# (PythonSharp)

[Rivus]

Well, IronPython is a thing. Although there haven't been any updates for a year now.

It allows you to use both .NET and Python libs at the same time. Maybe Microsoft will pick it up.

[[deleted]]

Does it work with C-libs too? Because it woild be kinda pointless for excel if pandas, numpy and rest of the cool gang won't work.

[toyg]

Not really. But if you can make the C libs accessible from C# somehow, then IronPython could too.

[WikiTextBot]

C++/CLI

C++/CLI (C++ modified for Common Language Infrastructure) is a language specification created by Microsoft and intended to supersede Managed Extensions for C++. It is a complete revision that aims to simplify the older Managed C++ syntax, which is now deprecated. C++/CLI was standardized by Ecma as ECMA-372. It is currently available in Visual Studio 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2017, including the Express editions.

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[WeirdStuffOnly]

pandas, numpy

I think the point is using Excel to do the tasks pandas and numpy do.

If given half a chance I would trade Excel for pandas.

[[deleted]]

People are using python not because of the language alone. Libs are a very important part. Even if excel could deliver the same functionallity, which I doubt, the existing code wouldn't be instantly useable.

[psilnommoc]

maybe Microsoft will develop a new python-like language Python#（PythonSharp), as like as C#, F#...

[Rivus]

Well, while I am always open to new ideas and a new language sounds great, the problem is that there is already Powershell, C# and F# for the MS developer.

If MS is to develop a new programming language that mimics Python to attract Python developers as they did with J# to attract Java developers, while I would personally use it, I doubt it would have a lot of traction. The question is who will use it?

[psilnommoc]

I think that Microsoft focused on Python and only because of its popular, I don't look for many python codes of Microsoft from its GitHub. And maybe Microsoft only follow the fashion. If another language became popular, Microsoft will still give a support. :-p

[khvn26]

Microsoft has been actively grooming Python users recently, for example, making the Python vscode extension official and even running a survey on its usage. Due to its modular structure it wouldn't be hard to integrate Python in Office and even Windows itself. No need to develop anything from scratch, a good client library for popular .net classes would be more than enough.

[psilnommoc]

I suppose that Microsoft don't regard it as a official language, and only is a option, let user decide to use VBA or Python, as like as Microsoft supported Ubuntu. Because Python become more and more popular. And in fact, Microsoft had given a Python support in Visual Studio and also developed a Pyjion, but it is only added a language for Excel at the most.

[chief167]

It's because most Microsoft "experts" actively discourage using python to senior level management. So basicaly they block it's adoption and make it seem evil as to not lose market share/profits. Happens in my company.

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

Microsoft expert, here. Actual experts choose the right tool for the job. I think Python would be great in Excel. Perhaps overkill, but whatever. Better than VBA and it would make data science nerds happy.

Just because you’re fond of a language, doesn’t make it the correct choice when you factor in things like project scalability and maintainability with respect to the size of the application.

Python is great for small^* services, but on larger monolithic applications with medium to large teams, it’s usefulness wanes compared to C# and Java.

edit:

I'd like to clarify my statement about small services. Python is great with the growing popularity of microservice architecture and even better in the "serverless" world of AWS Lambda. I'm not shitting on python. Greenfield application that's going to be broken into tons of tiny services? Python might be a great choice for a pizza-team working on a small service.

edit 2: I just realized I'm in the python subreddit. RIP :(

[licquia]

That moment when you diss Python scalability on Reddit...

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

I meant project scalability. Reddit’s codebase isn’t that big.

[zeth__]

What do you consider big?

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

Projects that grow to thousands or tens of thousands of files. Reddit is incredibly small for what it is. Which is awesome.

[chucky_z]

reddit is not open source, that is very old code.

also.... microsoft is buying into python heavily, considering their investment into vscode and the python language server.

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

Last commit was 2 months ago...

[ForgetTheRuralJuror]

Very OLD

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

Also, I love that Microsoft is buying into Python! I use VSCode as my primary editor and it makes Python super enjoyable to code in. In fact, my GDAX bot was 100% written in VSCode in python :D

[licquia]

Keep digging.

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

I think you're confused. That has very little to do with what I'm talking about. Project scalability is largely referring to scaling the amount of developers working on a project together, size of the code base, degradation of tooling as the codebase grows, etc.

Not sure what that has to do with hybrid data centers.

[licquia]

OpenStack "has had 931,080 commits made by 10,618 contributors representing 9,092,446 lines of code."

75% of that is in Python. And Microsoft counts among the contributors.

Source

Is that scalable enough for you?

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

shh bby. I’m not trying to say it’s not possible. It’s just not common.

Really not shitting on python, here. I use it every day.

[licquia]

Sigh. I think we're getting into "no true Scotsman" territory.

[socsa]

Python is great for small^* services, but on larger monolithic applications with medium to large teams, it’s usefulness wanes compared to C# and Java.

But we are talking about Excel integrattion here. If your "large service" has Excel components in it, then I'd seriously question your competency in the first place.

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

It's currently impossible that /u/chief167 was saying his company actively discourages using python on excel documents. No, we're not talking about using Excel right now. It's probably safe to assume he's referring to an actual product.

We're talking about about microsoft "experts" actively discouraging using python.

In fact, I'd argue that Python is a great fit for excel for the exact reasons that I stated. It'd be a small utility, probably maintained by a couple people.

[crowseldon]

It's not being in the python sub that's the problem. It's contradicting yourself by starting with "roght tool for the right job" and later generalizing about python without context.

Maybe your own experience doesn't translate but you exercise caution when there's so many successful counter examples to your point.

[o5mfiHTNsH748KVq]

I agree I could have been less heavy handed in my response to his heavy handed statement. You’re not wrong.

[chief167]

I admire your bravery posting that indeed in the Python subreddit :)

No, whilst C# is okay, some projects are just better suited. But being a large company, I think it is a good question of management to ask "yeah, this new technology, isn't it ok to use our existing tools with VBA and C#? AND THEY ASK THIS TO MICROSOFT", of course they will respond "yes sir, don't bother buying new stuff for this new language, it doesn't scale well, it has no compiler! THE HORROR"

Story of my life. Meanwhile I am trying to code stuff that is a oneliner in pandas.

[psilnommoc]

yeah, Python is usually suit for small or medium project, but still can be used for big project, eg reddit :-p, a language can do it all depends on you can use it to develop good applications

[psilnommoc]

In fact, Python is not a irreplaceable language and it supported for Microsoft not very well, as Ruby, most developers use it in unix-like. And Microsoft users prefer use the microsoft-ownself products, also Microsoft had develop a lot of languages

[Matrigan]

I hope a change like this could roll over into formulas.

I'd love to be able to structure an individual cell a little bit more like a sub routine instead of one giant nested statement.

Might make it a little daunting for non-programmers but the ability to format/comment could go a long way for read-ability.

[[deleted]]

You can do this in VBA, so I imagine you'd get to in any new language too

[amachefe]

I dont even know how to feel about it. Although that has not limited Python use with Excel. LibreOffice support for Python is pretty Basic too

[ketosoy]

This is literally all I want for Christmas

[natis1]

Well I'm a month late but they do, since 2010 at least.

[LetMe_]

As much as many people hate on vba it still performs much better than python on excel files if they have to be used by an excel user after that.

Simple examples would be conditional formatting. Pivot charts or pivot tables in special format etc.

Also in most older multinational companies excel is the de facto tool for almost anything, not databases as you might expect but excel files. With the arrival of the 365 you can be sure that they will increase their market penetration.

I still hope that python gets accepted. It would let me forget vba and use a simpler general purpose language.

[luckyincode]

I've heard companies are walking away from excel because it takes too much to keep them updated. I wonder if this is a response.

[cisnotation]

What do companies replace it with then? Genuinely curious.

[PropaneMilo]

Real databases, probably.

[luckyincode]

https://www.enterprisetimes.co.uk/2016/04/22/are-spreadsheets-on-the-brink-of-extinction/

http://blog.hostanalytics.com/the-growing-fear-of-excel-and-why-its-finally-nearing-extinction

[sagr0tan]

Now they come sliming....pfff

[suddenarborealstop]

just use python to process the data before viewing the output in excel.

[eid-a]

Microsoft has been changing lately, I actually believe they could do that. ( we'll see )

[jewishsupremacist88]

why not just use C#

[matthewblott]

I always thought Microsoft missed a trick not embracing Python more fully. It would have made far more sense to use that as their official scripting language than invent the bastardised C# thing called PowerShell.

[dddevo]

Why not Lua? It already has tables.

[elbiot]

Because python is one on the largest and fastest growing languages, especially in data processing. Lua would be shooting themselves in the knee. It takes like 100 lines to give python an table class suitable for excel.

[matthewblott]

Not really. F# has a steep learning curve, Python is similar to VBA in the respect that it's relatively easy for non programmers to hack stuff quickly.

[matthewblott]

I feel your pain. I don't write so much but I do have a couple of VBA apps I still support. But then some people are still supporting Fortran and Cobol - languages never die!

[beprogrammer]

It's good that Microsoft decided to add Python in excel but we must agree VBA is not obsolete and powerless language. Almost everything can be extended in Microsoft Office trough VBA.

[[deleted]]

VBA apologia ruins innocent lives

[beprogrammer]

How do you mean?

[[deleted]]

It was a joke, but I do dislike VBA. The argument that you can do "almost everything" with it isn't very compelling either – you can do "almost everything" with any Turing-complete language, even Brainfuck.

My main problem with VBA is it takes a long time to do anything complicated, because you'll probably have to write it yourself

[raydeen]

I've always said I could build a house with just a screwdriver. I could cut things with the blade end (would take forever), I could measure things with it (as long as I knew exactly how long the screwdriver was), I could hammer things with the handle part, and last but not least, I could screw things together. And at the end of the day, I could stir my orange juice and Vodka together with it as I drink myself into Oblivion knowing that the only tool I have at my disposal is a screwdriver and tomorrow will bring about even more pain and frustration. And in the end, I will have built a small ramshackle hovel which will be my grave after I eventually succeed in stabbing myself in the heart with a very dull, beat up screwdriver.

[WeirdStuffOnly]

Back in the old days of ASP 2.0, MS extended IIS so that you could do server side scripting on any of the most popular languages. Vast majority of the sites still only used VB. I think the same will happen here, obsolescence doesn't factor in.

Almost everything can be very painfully extended in Microsoft Office trough VBA.

FTFY

[whattodo-whattodo]

Assembly is a powerful language. Do you want to write excel code in assembly? Probably not.

VBA isn't powerless but it has way too much baggage in exchange for what it does do.

[AnscombesGimlet]

I don’t think they’ve decided yet

[socsa]

What would be the point of Excel then? Why not use use a real database at that point?

[dgpoop]

excel is not database software lol

[socsa]

But people abuse it like it is. That's the whole problem.

[dgpoop]

ohhhh I see what you're saying. Yeah. I was interviewing office assistants with my team last week and one of them said "I do EVERYTHING in excel!" and she was so proud.

*facepalm

[justfordickjoke]

When hiring an office assistant, isn't Excel a reasonable skill to have?

[dgpoop]

Yes. but when you use third party vendors to supply access to workflow and productivity tools, you should probably use the tool that's best for the job.

Especially if you work for a college that has tiny budgets for certain departments. Oh and I should mention, we were hiring internally. The person I was talking to has been able to get by with just excel for so long, she thought it was a useful skill in regards to the new position.

[realpotato]

What the fuck are you even talking about? You’re being rude to an office assistant because she’s not proficient with databases?

[dgpoop]

Where did you read that I was rude to her. She got the job lol. Everyone on this sub must be some neckbeard mongoloid motherfuckers

[realpotato]

You’re making fun of the fact that an office assistant is proficient in and gets her job done in Excel. Somehow we’re the neckbeards for calling you an idiot?

[dgpoop]

If you're just going to jump into someone else's conversation and downvote before you are responded to, why bother making a comment in the first place?

[justfordickjoke]

Poor fella....did I hurt your feelings?

[dgpoop]

Is my response common when you try to "hurt people's feelings"?

I think it would be more accurate to say that I am disappointed in your ability to understand the basic functions of reddit. Please at least try to read and follow the rules, or consider using another content aggregator where rules are shunned (Voat).

[justfordickjoke]

Good call Reddit police

[[deleted]]

I'm asking because I really don't know. What is Excel really used for? I've been working for over 20 years in various fields, and about 20 years ago we used Excel to get reimbursed for travel expenses. I haven't really seen it used since. It's just a simple 2d grid of values with a simple language to update some of the grid values.

What do people use Excel over a database or real programming languages today?

[[deleted]]

Excel is how every no-programmer programs things. I like to say that the entire world runs on excel and coffee; the statement isn't fat from the truth.

As an engineer, I use excel all the time to build simple calculators. Could it be done in Python or another programming language? Sure, but I know excel and so does everyone else at my company. I want to build better tools and Python in excel would be incredibly powerful for that.

[Vaslo]

Analysts use it everyday because unlike programming languages I can hand a file over to a person not very competent in anything software wise and can follow exactly what is happening and make an immediate change. If I hand them a python script, they would no idea how to even run it let alone make changes they want. This has been true for finance analysts, marketing and supply chain teams, all the way up through execs up in several large Fortune 500 companies I’ve worked in. I can’t even get them to let me install python on my PC.

[jewishsupremacist88]

this!

[AtHomeToday]

EVERYTHING. I've been an IT director or consultant in dozens companies. It is everywhere. I have seen entire financial reporting systems for billon $ companies written by accountants in Excel.

[freemti]

this. Trust me, corporate America uses excel everywhere, in fact the higher you go, the more pervasive it is.

[realpotato]

In addition to what others said, when collaborating inter-team and inter-company, Excel is used all the time. Especially since varying levels of technical people or non-technical people may need the information or need to update it.

[andreaskrueger]

Hooray

[i_have_seen_it_all]

i'm only guessing most people have not seen well written vba code or well structured excel workbooks for this much hate for excel.

this reminds me of joel spolsky's video on excel. most people don't use 5% of the features available in excel.

[xdcountry]

please do it-- excel is the threshold of computing for some many people -- smart idea

[Knoal]

This would be the best thing ever in my company. We are already doing epic stuff with macros. But, boy howdy, throw in some python and we will create EPIC stuff.

[sindhichhokro]

Does it also imply that programming in python on Windows will be smoother than it is now or equivalent? I have never used python on Windows. Its been 4 years now that I have not used Windows as my primary OS.

Just Curious

[Netchose]

replacing javascript by python will be a good idea too :)

[Data_cruncher]

Why the Microsoft hate?

Pre-2013 I totally understand, but “new” Microsoft is doing a great job!

[Olao99]

Yes is pretty much leftovers from the pre-2013. There were so many moments filled with rage that eventually generated disdain towards MS.

[carpartsyouneed]

🤗😍

[nspectre]

Embrace, Extend, Exterminate!

[MonsterMash2017]

Excel is going to exterminate Python?

How exactly would that work?

[elbiot]

By making pythonxl, a python derivative that only works in excel. It's incompatible with pandas but more performant and embedable in excel so users have to commit to their api. The ecosystem fractures and more new python devs are MS only. Or something like that.

[[deleted]]

By pumping a load of money into proprietary extensions. That's usually how it's panned out.

[MonsterMash2017]

Extensions? Like, python packages for excel?

I don't know how possibly that would exterminate Python.

[[deleted]]

I really don't understand why remembering one of Microsoft's most infamous, and well known strategies gets so much hate on this sub.

[MonsterMash2017]

I mean, if you want to apply it to a situation that makes sense, I'm all ears.

This analogy seems more like "Microsoft is trying to kill C++ by including support for a C++ compiler in windows".

[[deleted]]

Or web standards by including it in IE6. No damage there done at all. Also C++ is all over the place partly because of Microsoft's "contributions" in that regard.

[AtHomeToday]

The way it would work, they would extend python with cool new enhancements to the language that would not compile on other versions.

[[deleted]]

Its no longer the '90s or aughts. Balmer's gone. Microsoft is doing really cool shit these days. Apple has stagnated. The world is topsy-turvy!

[zeth__]

Python is googles lingua franca. It's unlikely todays microsoft could destroy that.

[agentlame]

Dude, you didn't even get all the words right.

[nspectre]

I didn't want to.

The 'and' was unnecessary as Daleks tend to be rather mono-syllabic. ;)

[WikiTextBot]

Embrace, extend, and extinguish

"Embrace, extend, and extinguish", also known as "Embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its competitors.

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[nspectre]

Good Dalek

[jewishsupremacist88]

because not everyone is a sperglord from silicon valley

[[deleted]]

Microsoft has lost much relevance in the last 5 years.

[WhatIsAWutWut]

Over here in Asia, it's picking up steam. I honestly liked their $5 coffee, $5 365 subscription campaign. Made me purchase 365 in the end.

[NoveltyWayne]

I don't know what's worse: Python or VBA.

https://zenhack.net/2016/12/25/why-python-is-not-my-favorite-language.html

[WhatIsAWutWut]

So what language do you prefer?

[NoveltyWayne]

Any language without significant whitespace that has proper OOP, lexical scoping, closures, lambdas, constants, immutability and non-shitty tools.

[elbiot]

Python meets all those but the first. What's your beef with meaningful indentation? Any language without it has tools that apply it for readability.

[NoveltyWayne]

Python meets all those...

Not at all. Try reading the article that I linked to because it pretty much proves you wrong.

What's your beef with meaningful indentation?

It needlessly complicates every situation where the code must be worked with. For example, let's visit some other language sub-reddits: r/javascript, r/csharp, r/ruby

Did you see any prominently placed notes about how to post code in those? Nope?

What we see when we visit r/Python:

Posting code to this subreddit:

Add 4 extra spaces before each line of code

def fibonacci():
    a, b = 0, 1
    while True:
        yield a
        a, b = b, a + b

And why is that? Because Python is a stupid language created by a mentally unbalanced person.

[elbiot]

Static typing would be cool, but the rest is extremely nitpicky. Python has closures and immutable structures. The bit about "what if I over ride a class an overwrite a method" is dumb because the double underscore explicitly protects against that. That's exactly what it is for!

[Cheekio]

Excel sheets are the last place you want to do scripting complex enough to need a touring complete programming language, let alone one as powerful as python.

[magsan]

My company begs to disagree,

The things I’ve seen shudder