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Indeed. Ultimately a spreadsheet is a REPL for a functional programming language. Makes you wonder why we worry so much about teaching everyone to code when th

by zzalpha 11y ago

Indeed. Ultimately a spreadsheet is a REPL for a functional programming language. Makes you wonder why we worry so much about teaching everyone to code when the average office admin does it every day!

mturmon 11y ago
You can even add another layer of abstraction that people seem to do OK with, which is "Goal seek". Excel will tweak an input cell until the output cell reaches a given condition.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  > Excel will tweak an input cell until the output cell reaches a given condition. Never trust a statistic you haven't faked yourself? ;)
andybak 11y ago
I agree wholeheartedly. Common wisdom states that 'spreadsheets don't scale' but I wonder if that is because we haven't built good enough tools to facilitate that. Imagine if developers developed in spreadsheets and as much effort went into creating new paradigms within them as has gone into programming language design.
- eru 11y ago
  See "Improving the world's most popular functional language: user-defined functions in Excel": http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers/excel/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers...
kuschku 11y ago
Well, a Reactive Functional programming language. Everything is mutable by default, but changing one variable automatically updates all dependents. This style is also getting more popular elsewhere, and with RxJava and RxAndroid nowadays you can even use it on android.
- blendo 11y ago
  What, and give up Excel/VBA? More seriously, an F# IDE baked into Excel would lead to spontaneous Snoopy-dancing in the finance IT trenches.
  - cgio 11y ago
    What about this? Not affiliated or even tried it, but came upon while looking for something else in the past. http://fcell.io/ http://fcell.io/
  - eru 11y ago
    We've had a Haskell-clone baked into Spreadsheets at Standard Chartered Bank for a while.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
tbyehl 11y ago
The beauty of the spreadsheet is that people don't even realize they are programming.
eru 11y ago
Compare "Improving the world's most popular functional language: user-defined functions in Excel": http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers/excel/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers...

by zzalpha 11y ago

mturmon 11y ago

You can even add another layer of abstraction that people seem to do OK with, which is "Goal seek". Excel will tweak an input cell until the output cell reaches a given condition.

mschuster91 11y ago
> Excel will tweak an input cell until the output cell reaches a given condition. Never trust a statistic you haven't faked yourself? ;)

andybak 11y ago

I agree wholeheartedly. Common wisdom states that 'spreadsheets don't scale' but I wonder if that is because we haven't built good enough tools to facilitate that. Imagine if developers developed in spreadsheets and as much effort went into creating new paradigms within them as has gone into programming language design.

eru 11y ago
See "Improving the world's most popular functional language: user-defined functions in Excel": http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers/excel/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers...

kuschku 11y ago

Well, a Reactive Functional programming language. Everything is mutable by default, but changing one variable automatically updates all dependents. This style is also getting more popular elsewhere, and with RxJava and RxAndroid nowadays you can even use it on android.

blendo 11y ago
What, and give up Excel/VBA? More seriously, an F# IDE baked into Excel would lead to spontaneous Snoopy-dancing in the finance IT trenches.
- cgio 11y ago
  What about this? Not affiliated or even tried it, but came upon while looking for something else in the past. http://fcell.io/ http://fcell.io/
- eru 11y ago
  We've had a Haskell-clone baked into Spreadsheets at Standard Chartered Bank for a while.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

tbyehl 11y ago

The beauty of the spreadsheet is that people don't even realize they are programming.

eru 11y ago

Compare "Improving the world's most popular functional language: user-defined functions in Excel": http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers/excel/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers...