2y ago

Microsoft announces Python formulas in Excel... which have to get sent to the cloud

techcommunity.microsoft.com

Announcing Python in Excel: Combining the power of Python and the flexibility of Excel.

Since its inception, Microsoft Excel has changed how people organize, analyze, and visualize their data, providing a basis for decision-making for the flying billionaires heads up in the clouds who don't give a fuck for life off~~the~~line

Technology @kbin.social

Aatube @kbin.social

2y ago

Microsoft announces Python formulas in Excel... which have to get sent to the cloud

techcommunity.microsoft.com /t5/excel-blog/announcing-python-in-excel-combining-the-power-of-python-and-the/ba-p/3893439

Technology @beehaw.org

Aatube @kbin.social

2y ago

Microsoft announces Python formulas in Excel... which have to get sent to the cloud

techcommunity.microsoft.com /t5/excel-blog/announcing-python-in-excel-combining-the-power-of-python-and-the/ba-p/3893439

Technology @kbin.social

LollerCorleone @kbin.social

2y ago

Announcing Python in Excel: Combining the power of Python and the flexibility of Excel.

techcommunity.microsoft.com /t5/excel-blog/announcing-python-in-excel-combining-the-power-of-python-and-the/ba-p/3893439

97 comments

Damn they found a way to make python slower
- Emulate that shit with Java!
  
  I used to make high performance distributed computing server-systems for Investment banks.
  Since the advent of Just In Time compiling, Java isn't slow if properly used.
  It can however be stupidly slow if you don't know what you're doing (so can something like Assembly: if you're using a simple algorithm with a O(n) = n^2 execution time instead of something with O(n) = n*log(n) time, it's going to be slow for anything but a quantum computer, which is why, for example, most libraries with sorting algorithms use something more complex than the silly simple method of examining every value against every other value).
  
  java isn't slow
- That made a python interface wrapper arround VB Script.
Wow, Microsoft is now copying LibreOffice. Who could have guesses?
- The Python bit. The cloud was copied from Google's suite.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
  
  This happened in my old place - also on the business side. Asked for python, got it, then had it immediately removed because of security risks.
  I told the head that I could still access tables and shit via excel if I wanted so what does it matter? He didn't realise this, and asked that I told no-one else it could be done. FFS.
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.
Surprising no one. You can't even autosave files in Office software anymore unless you use OneDrive.
- unfortunately the local storage technology just isn’t there yet. we have to rely on the magic of the cloud to handle complex things like auto saving files and running python interpreters
  
  😂😂😂
- Yeh that pisses me off. When I looked that up, I saw that on the Microsoft help forums their response was 'well, you never really had that feature locally anyway'.
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
Holy shit Excel is still like it was 20 years ago. And now, when they want to add such a useful feature, it comes with that bag of crap with it? Fucking hell. I know why I switched all non-trivial stuff to python.
Defining reusable functions? Diagrams with parametric ranges? (Only the title can be a cell reference, nothing else) Zooming in diagrams? More than 1 x axis? More than 2 y axis? ...
- Even a basic thing like XY scatter plots is absolutely terrible. I had made dozens of them before but in 365, when I selected the data and clicked "Scatter Plot", it refused to assign the left column to X and the right to Y. I fought for 10 minutes with "Chart Series" and then gave up to look up the solution. Also very few trendline functions are available, the default axes look like crap and min/max is broken for logarithmic charts.
  Not to mention that one third of all options is in a keyboard-unfriendly, laggy "responsive" UI while the rest is in windows that barely changed since 1995, and are completely missing in the web version. Localization has only become sloppier and you want centimeters rather than inches in Office Online? Fuck you.
  
  Oh those numbers? That is a date. I will delete the original numbers and replace it with something else. Good luck.
  Excel is one of those examples of a software that is only used everywhere because it used to be the best and it is overall not bad. So "everyone" already knows it and the incentive to move to something else is fairly small, because it would only be so much better. But still, why are they not developing it further? Completely crazy.
  
  I agree with the rest but I think the ribbon concept itself is nice and they actually updated the UI for Windows 11
So this is basically a native version of xlwings that requires exposing your excel data?
- Does xlwings require any specific Python installation? Can I use it with my WinPython 3.10 installation on Windows 10?
  
  As long as it can run Python, yes. It functions as a library just like VBA.
microsoft ad please remove
- Ads generally don't criticize what they're selling.
  
  welcome in 2023
- lazy social obviously didn’t read the article
  Checks out

97 comments