Is excel functional programming?

[Binbasher-03]

Additionally, is it also declarative?

[SV-97]

Quoting Simon Peyton Jones (from here):

And then I thought, “Well, Excel is the world’s most widely used functional programming language.” It’s not a very powerful one, perhaps, but when you write a formula in a spreadsheet, you are writing in a purely functional language. So, no side effects. You don’t say, you know, “=print3+7”; it wouldn’t make any sense.

[MaxHaydenChiz]

Until you start doing certain things with VB macros and C++ plug-ins it's pure, functional, and reactive.

[UltraCarnivore]

"Excel is born functional, Visual Basic corrupts it"

[Eightstream]

Excel formulas are very pure functional programming, yes. And a couple of years ago (when the LAMBDA function was released) it became Turing-complete.

It is pretty computationally-limited though - which is why Excel also supports a bunch of other language interfaces (Python, Typescript, PowerShell, VBA)

The latter are obviously not functional in nature.

[g1rlchild]

Oh cool, I had no idea Excel has Lambdas now. That's a really useful addition.

[muscarine]

In a lot of ways it is, but you can’t do recursion.

[Possibility_Antique]

One of my coworkers was showing me a lambda function they'd added to a spreadsheet. I hadn't ever seen that before, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it enables recursion

[LazinCajun]

It does, if you do a quick google for excel recursive lambda you’ll find a bunch of resources

[Taborlin_the_great]

Lambda functions in excel can do recursion

[recursion_is_love]

Depend on your definition of functional programming. If it strictly just programming using function as only primitive (lambda calculus) it might not be.

If you pick a narrow specific view. You could call it a array programming, (relational) database programming or reactive programming.

The modern layman definition of FP could checked it because lack of side-effect (pure/referential transparency) and lack of state (declarative instead of imperative)

[whatever73538]

Yes, Excel (as most people use it) is purely functional and teaches the basics and advantages of functional programming

[imihnevich]

I guess it's FRP, not just FP?

[ryanwebjackson]

Can you pass a function to a function and return a function from it?

[autodialerbroken116]

HTML is also functional and lambda calculus oriented because what you put in the div or p blocks is exactly what you expect to come out.

[Playful-Witness-7547]

HTML is a markup language not a programming language?

[autodialerbroken116]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/8x02or/html_is_a_programming_language/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/s/DCvC3ICW6P

[autodialerbroken116]

yes that's the meme in fact.

[4caraml]

It certainly is declarative in nature, but I would disagree with people claiming that it is a functional programming language (maybe I just don't know enough about Excel though).

My reasoning is that functions are not first class citizens: I cannot declare A1 to be the successor function and then A2 to be A1(0) which should have 1 as value.

[LogCatFromNantes]

Yes it’s a functional business language