Python in Excel: Combining the Power of Python and the Flexibility of Excel | Hacker News Reader

Python in Excel: Combining the Power of Python and the Flexibility of Excel

techcommunity.microsoft.com

65 pointslocalhost12 comments

“Python code used by Excel runs on the Microsoft Cloud …”

Bummer. Was hoping it would be local instead.

Harder to force you to pay every month of it runs locally.

That is very sad to hear. It’s a shame how badly VBA was neglected and this is a poor surrogate if it won’t run local.

To be fair, if every install of Excel started installing a full docker container of Python, anaconda, scikit, statsmodels, pandas, Matplotlib, seaborn, and more people would complain Excel is far too bloated.

They probably could make it an optional local install, but it sounds like focused on UX first and wanted collaborators on Teams to have the same experience which would maybe be harder with mixed local installs and cloud containers.

Mixed hosting sounds better - Team instances run from the cloud, but can be locally installed

I deeply resent that my computer must be connected to the internet if I want to do work

We totally understand that there are folks who want local in addition to cloud. But local is a very hard security problem. We needed to ship something to see if we have product market fit, so we prioritized that first.

Disclosure: I work on the design of the integration.

Very ironic username?

Thanks for the info. Somehow that got lost in the launch messaging, and I appreciate your comment.

My simple preference would be optional local install so that it can be used in places without internet connectivity.

There is an interesting looking competitor in this space that is built with Python integration from the ground up.

https://www.neptyne.com/

I haven't tried it yet, nor am I affiliated with Neptyne, but it looks intriguing.

Excel has such a stronghold though.

Very cool, but too bad it's cloud only. I really need a self hosted version of this

Reading the headline, I initially thought that Microsoft bought the company behind XLWings [1], which also enables you to use Excel directly within Excel, even locally. Not affiliated in any kind to that company, just used it in the past.

[1] https://www.xlwings.org/

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