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This is the first time in my computer science career that I've heard Excel (and spreadsheets in general) called a functional programming language! What an excel

• pgt 10y ago
  The lambda calculus is incredibly value-oriented. Consider that it is impossible to write a formula that injects another formula into a blank cell: all values flow from other values. To overcome this, you need to write a side-effecting Excel macro. This is why some people have integrated Python into Excel. It's a shame that the CLR (and more functional languages like Clojure) is not better integrated into Excel. Story time (MS rant): When Microsoft pulled Access (the best relational DB UI) to avoid competition with SQL Server, stopped adding features to IIS (still no wildcard domains!) and did not fix the botched Visual Studio deployment story (publish 10MB binaries for 1-line changes when you control the web server and the OS?), they ceded the "IDE" wars. Excel is sort of a business IDE, except sharing spreadsheets is a nightmare, which is what Google Sheets is really good at. I reluctantly started switching to other "IDEs" like IntelliJ (still worse than VS) and the Google Apps suite. However, SQL Server Management Studio is still the best SQL writing interface for me.