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This is extremely significant to simplifying spreadsheets.
by rajandatta 6y ago
This is extremely significant to simplifying spreadsheets.
- tgv 6y agoYes, but there is no mention of debugging. In the hands of Excel cowboys, this can become another foot gun.
- bombcar 6y agoA number of bugs will be solved by moving to it (a copied function is typo’d in one cell, etc) and you can test it pretty easily in a cell. Excel is basically a REPL with cells.
- robertlagrant 6y agoA REPL treated as a software system.
- int_19h 6y agoBetween this and LET (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/let-function-34842dd8-b92b-4d3f-b325-b8b8f9908999 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/let-function-3484...), Excel seems to be a full-fledged pure functional language now, with lexical scoping, first-class and high-order functions etc.
- bombcar 6y agoI see it making spreadsheets easier to convert into code, too. Many “business programs” begin as a spreadsheet.
- lambda_obrien 6y agoWe have services which run a "notebook as a service" so it's not too far fetched to think of Microsoft doing this with Excel spreadsheets. I bet it would take the business world by storm and would be a good move.
- robertlagrant 6y agoNext up: Excel functions running as Azure Functions in the cloud.
- avandvrnot 6y agoI assumed that was what this is!