5 ms·

Play blackjack in Excel

62 points by karamazov 14y ago

bilbobaggie 14y ago
I thought the point of IronSpread was to increase productivity.
thanosbaskous 14y ago
Excel can do some pretty impressive things. Another cool-but-probably-useless example: Excel as a 3d engine http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel... Check out the videos to get a quick understanding of what they did.
- Metrop0218 14y ago
  That's nuts
- dmboyd 14y ago
  Essentially, excel is a functional language, without the ability for recursion. If there were a built in array datatype, that'd be possible. There's a few papers floating around explaining an integration between Haskell and excel, described in some places as hsExcel, but I haven't seen a working copy.
- coroxout 14y ago
  Ha, that's great. I knocked up a more or less working FreeCell solitaire in Excel one bored afternoon, so Blackjack should certainly be possible in plain old Excel VBA. Most impressive Excel things I've seen by other people: a Game of Life (I'm guessing not SeanDav's, but who knows!), a Dijkstra's algorithm demo which let you resize cells and recalculated the shortest distance between two cells, and this rather impressive Enigma cipher encoder/decoder: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755656 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755656
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
chris_mahan 14y ago
speaking of, it says on their FAQ that they will be able to call python function from excel mid-july. Update? Or maybe we're talking a different year, not 2012?
- karamazov 14y ago
  This works! See our docs: http://ironspread.com/docs.html#udf http://ironspread.com/docs.html#udf The FAQ is updated - thanks for pointing it out.
robomartin 14y ago
Probably a cool way to learn and apply Python too.
K2h 14y ago
I like the snarky remarks at the end of the code like: dealer_says("Now I have to go back to working as a VBA programmer!")
Ives 14y ago
The same thing is possible in Excel VBA by creating a Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range) in the appropriate worksheet, which will be called when a cell is changed. I don't see any reason why a complete blackjack game would be impossible. I am however sure that the python code is much nicer than the VBA code to do so, and if it weren't for the distribution trouble (requiring a plugin to be installed for all users of the workbook) I'd definitely use IronSpread.
devmach 14y ago
If it's python, if i'm able to use python modules and call functions from excel ( udf ), why IronSpread folks pushes for useless demos ? Show me some network stuff. Show me how can i write a simple crm ( no not like the one on their blog ) " with " centeral db and gives me ability to work with my coworkers together. Show me how can i gather information from different sources ( web, db v.s. ) and analyse it.
miratom 14y ago
So? Play PacMan in excel: http://www.cypherhackz.net/archives/2006/10/05/play-pacman-in-excel/ http://www.cypherhackz.net/archives/2006/10/05/play-pacman-i...
- karamazov 14y ago
  We work with Excel 2007 and 2010 ;)
dmboyd 14y ago
Or there's always the lighter weight option pyspread[1] in which cells are objects, works with numpy arrays and any module. [1]: http://manns.github.com/pyspread/ http://manns.github.com/pyspread/
SeanDav 14y ago
For a bit of a laugh I wrote a Conway's Game of Life in Excel using cells as pixels. I could get quite smooth animation up to a screen size of around 200x200 cells. The main bottleneck was the need to check every cell in the grid, every generation, which quickly becomes hard for VBA to do smoothly. It was fun however to see Excel doing animation.
josephagoss 14y ago
Later year students have taken control of our entire pilot plant for our electrical 'controls and instrumentation' engineering with excel. Very impressive, I used to scoff at the engineers using excel (I'm a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering student) but it can do some excellent stuff.
perssontm 14y ago
I wouldnt be surprised if theese guys are beeing bought by MS sooner rather than later. Replacing VBA feels like it should be quite high on the priority list.

62 points by karamazov 14y ago

I thought the point of IronSpread was to increase productivity.

Excel can do some pretty impressive things. Another cool-but-probably-useless example: Excel as a 3d engine http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel... Check out the videos to get a quick understanding of what they did.

Metrop0218 14y ago
That's nuts
dmboyd 14y ago
Essentially, excel is a functional language, without the ability for recursion. If there were a built in array datatype, that'd be possible. There's a few papers floating around explaining an integration between Haskell and excel, described in some places as hsExcel, but I haven't seen a working copy.
coroxout 14y ago
Ha, that's great. I knocked up a more or less working FreeCell solitaire in Excel one bored afternoon, so Blackjack should certainly be possible in plain old Excel VBA. Most impressive Excel things I've seen by other people: a Game of Life (I'm guessing not SeanDav's, but who knows!), a Dijkstra's algorithm demo which let you resize cells and recalculated the shortest distance between two cells, and this rather impressive Enigma cipher encoder/decoder: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755656 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755656

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

chris_mahan 14y ago

speaking of, it says on their FAQ that they will be able to call python function from excel mid-july. Update? Or maybe we're talking a different year, not 2012?

karamazov 14y ago
This works! See our docs: http://ironspread.com/docs.html#udf http://ironspread.com/docs.html#udf The FAQ is updated - thanks for pointing it out.

robomartin 14y ago

Probably a cool way to learn and apply Python too.

K2h 14y ago

I like the snarky remarks at the end of the code like: dealer_says("Now I have to go back to working as a VBA programmer!")

Ives 14y ago

The same thing is possible in Excel VBA by creating a Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range) in the appropriate worksheet, which will be called when a cell is changed. I don't see any reason why a complete blackjack game would be impossible. I am however sure that the python code is much nicer than the VBA code to do so, and if it weren't for the distribution trouble (requiring a plugin to be installed for all users of the workbook) I'd definitely use IronSpread.

devmach 14y ago

If it's python, if i'm able to use python modules and call functions from excel ( udf ), why IronSpread folks pushes for useless demos ? Show me some network stuff. Show me how can i write a simple crm ( no not like the one on their blog ) " with " centeral db and gives me ability to work with my coworkers together. Show me how can i gather information from different sources ( web, db v.s. ) and analyse it.

miratom 14y ago

So? Play PacMan in excel: http://www.cypherhackz.net/archives/2006/10/05/play-pacman-in-excel/ http://www.cypherhackz.net/archives/2006/10/05/play-pacman-i...

karamazov 14y ago
We work with Excel 2007 and 2010 ;)

dmboyd 14y ago

Or there's always the lighter weight option pyspread[1] in which cells are objects, works with numpy arrays and any module. [1]: http://manns.github.com/pyspread/ http://manns.github.com/pyspread/

SeanDav 14y ago

For a bit of a laugh I wrote a Conway's Game of Life in Excel using cells as pixels. I could get quite smooth animation up to a screen size of around 200x200 cells. The main bottleneck was the need to check every cell in the grid, every generation, which quickly becomes hard for VBA to do smoothly. It was fun however to see Excel doing animation.

josephagoss 14y ago

Later year students have taken control of our entire pilot plant for our electrical 'controls and instrumentation' engineering with excel. Very impressive, I used to scoff at the engineers using excel (I'm a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering student) but it can do some excellent stuff.

perssontm 14y ago

I wouldnt be surprised if theese guys are beeing bought by MS sooner rather than later. Replacing VBA feels like it should be quite high on the priority list.