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Compared to one major IB bank Python system, this is all extremely clean and neat. Consider a Python API that is a thin wrapper on COM calls intended to be use

Compared to one major IB bank Python system, this is all extremely clean and neat. Consider a Python API that is a thin wrapper on COM calls intended to be used from Excel. Want to request some data? Fill in a 2D virtual Excel table. Want to pull some data? Query it and parse a text-dump of a table excerpt (remembering to parse #NA! Etc as nans). Want to automate a job? Enter it as a new row to a global spreadsheet. And for Gods sake, do NOT edit any of the other rows, lest the whole house go down in flames!!!

sfgweilr4f 5y ago
Or they could use instead use CSVs. What could possibly go wrong?
- jeffrallen 5y ago
  Everything is fine, as long as no Americans come and write 1,000 where obviously they should have written 1000 or 1'000. /s
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - blitzar 5y ago
    Or some american writes the date somewhere. edit: /s we love you american colleagues,
    - p_l 5y ago
      I can confirm that, in a non-bank financial institution, date formats involved with Excel->CSV->XML->Certain (shit) magic application were considerable pain point :|
    - simonh 5y ago
      Working with and for Americans is why I always use ISO year-month-day format.
      - girvo 5y ago
        That, and I like how they neatly sort.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    Or those pesky Europeans writing 12,34 when they obviously meant 12.34!
zzzeek 5y ago
this is the approach I'm familiar with, but back when I did it in Perl (yes Win32 perl with COM bindings) and Java (we wrote native Java plugins to do COM to Excel). all the important stuff is Excel VBA code that they spent years developing and can never replace, so any front end type of thing had to somehow get back to the Excel models. We eventually did rewrite the Excel models in Java, released something, and then the whole project probably got cancelled or something, 9/11 happened a few years later and the whole building in which all this code was written had to be demolished.
- mst 5y ago
  I remember back in 2000 converting the windows line of business app team at $ISP (I was mostly on the provisioning automation side) over to using a COM component called JendaRex which wrapped the perl VM just to expose the regexp engine. This basically came about after the Nth time they asked for regexp help and I had a trivial solution that didn't work in whatever native implementation they were using and I basically gave them a choice between JendaRex and "not having me debugging their regexps anymore". They unanimously chose JendaRex and everybody ended up happier as a result.

sfgweilr4f 5y ago

Or they could use instead use CSVs. What could possibly go wrong?

jeffrallen 5y ago
Everything is fine, as long as no Americans come and write 1,000 where obviously they should have written 1000 or 1'000. /s
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- blitzar 5y ago
  Or some american writes the date somewhere. edit: /s we love you american colleagues,
  - p_l 5y ago
    I can confirm that, in a non-bank financial institution, date formats involved with Excel->CSV->XML->Certain (shit) magic application were considerable pain point :|
  - simonh 5y ago
    Working with and for Americans is why I always use ISO year-month-day format.
    - girvo 5y ago
      That, and I like how they neatly sort.
- int_19h 5y ago
  Or those pesky Europeans writing 12,34 when they obviously meant 12.34!

zzzeek 5y ago

this is the approach I'm familiar with, but back when I did it in Perl (yes Win32 perl with COM bindings) and Java (we wrote native Java plugins to do COM to Excel). all the important stuff is Excel VBA code that they spent years developing and can never replace, so any front end type of thing had to somehow get back to the Excel models. We eventually did rewrite the Excel models in Java, released something, and then the whole project probably got cancelled or something, 9/11 happened a few years later and the whole building in which all this code was written had to be demolished.

mst 5y ago
I remember back in 2000 converting the windows line of business app team at $ISP (I was mostly on the provisioning automation side) over to using a COM component called JendaRex which wrapped the perl VM just to expose the regexp engine. This basically came about after the Nth time they asked for regexp help and I had a trivial solution that didn't work in whatever native implementation they were using and I basically gave them a choice between JendaRex and "not having me debugging their regexps anymore". They unanimously chose JendaRex and everybody ended up happier as a result.