4 ms·
Why? Because we can that's why!
by rodikana 5y ago
Why? Because we can that's why!
- IncRnd 5y agoI think we need a compiler written in excel!
- im_down_w_otp 5y agoSheets for modules. A column for each function. A row for each line of code. I weirdly would love to see this.
- mikaraento 5y agoThat is pretty much how macros worked in Excel 4.
- kitd 5y agoI once wrote an x86 assembler in Lotus 123.
- exikyut 5y ago[Need for citation intensifies]
- kitd 5y agoApologies, this was over 30 years ago! IIRC it made extensive use of lookup tables, both building them and being driven by them. It wasn't a complete implementation, but it proved the theory and scratched an itch.
- exikyut 5y agoThat's really cool :) and makes perfect sense. I can see what you mean about it scratching an itch. Definitely piqued my interest! (Varying "citation needed" didn't quite convey genuine curiosity the way I thought it would.)
- Banana699 5y agoI don't mean to put down OP but isn't it kinda straight forward since assembly is just a 1:1 correspondence with machine instructions? simply pasting the assembly program into a column then looking up each mnemonic in an association table linking each mnemonic with it's machine representation and writing the result into a new column would work. The Labels->Addresses mapping is another lookup but over the program column itself, looking up the row where the label is defined and using that as the offset from the start address of the program. An assembler is just a fancy string processor, Excel is mighty good at string processing. What I would bet a respectable sum on is that you can't parse/process/interpret even the simplest recursive languages (e.g. arithemtic, Expr ::= Expr + Expr | NUMBER) from pure Excel. Forget expressing the algorithm, there isn't even a suitable data structure to iterate over.
- mcbuilder 5y agoYes, but can it run DOOM?
- IncRnd 5y agoThat's always the question! Here is a video of a doom-alike in excel, explained by someone with a bird on his head. He's not clippy, but a real person with a bird on his head. [1] Here is a video displaying a walk-through of the Excel easter egg that showed the Hall of Tortured Souls! [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s105jek4WUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s105jek4WUI [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGqD-J_pRvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGqD-J_pRvs
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoExcel 95 contained an Easter egg which was a doom like game.
- laumars 5y agoIt was 3D but it wasn’t really Doom like. It reminded me more of Magic Carpet. There was a Windows 95 screen saver that was Doom like though.
- unnah 5y agoIt could be useful if there was a C program you would like to run, but the only tool available was Excel. Maybe strict IT admins had disabled the ability to run anything but Office, and even VBA macros were disabled. Although in that scenario it would be better if the compiler was written in C and could bootstrap itself.