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The Excel Formula Language Is Now Turing-Complete

• eesmith 5y ago
  Excel has long been Turing Complete. That is, many people have written Game of Life implementations in Excel. (Eg, https://github.com/Rich5/Excel-Game-of-Life https://github.com/Rich5/Excel-Game-of-Life ), and GoL is Turing Complete ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life ). Being able to create and call recursively defined functions is not a pre-requisite for Turing Completeness. For those who want to read the underlying MS product announcement: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/announcing-lambda-turn-excel-formulas-into-custom-functions/ba-p/1925546 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/announcing... .
  • stefano77it 5y ago
    beware: the GOL implemented in https://github.com/Rich5/Excel-Game-of-Life https://github.com/Rich5/Excel-Game-of-Life uses VBA and not Excel formulas
    • eesmith 5y ago
      Indeed, I can't find a non-VBA GoL implementation for Excel.