DataNitro (YC S12) launches Python for Microsoft Excel | Hacker News Reader

DataNitro (YC S12) launches Python for Microsoft Excel

techcrunch.com

70 pointsvj4428 comments

I remember being so excited about this product that I sent a msg to the IronSpread team thanking them for their work, even though I hadn't even used their product yet. (I'd never done that before for any product)

It's great to see this taking off (and I had no idea it was part of YC until now), and am looking forward to future updates!

Best of luck to the team :)

Thanks hkmurakami! - founder.

Please take my money if you port VBA on top of your Python runtime. And take even more money if said embedded Python runtime is available on Openoffice as well. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360454

BTW, I'm not so sure Python in the right choice for this integration.

Whitespace sensitivity is (arguably) a nice developer mind trick, however the target market for VBA are non-developers, who want to google for stuff, copy paste and get on with it. Which means, you cannot make assumptions about things like editors honoring whitespace, as well as the cognitive processes to rely on spacing etc.

This is why I strongly believe Python is the wrong language for this - but some language is definitely needed (Lua ? Javascript? Ruby?)

With VBA, you can't just copy-paste code from google - it's rare that you'll find something that does exactly what you want it to do on your specific spreadsheet. Readability, then, becomes important - and Python is easier to parse and edit for someone with basic programming skills than VBA is.

LibreOffice already pretty much supports the language half of VBA (the other, probably larger, half being the APIs).

How many non developers do you know that would rather write in Lua than Python?

Which nice-to-write language is most taught in universities?

Previous (2 months old) discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4085052

Nice work. Some piece of feedback: documentation is lacking any information on how to interact with VBA functionality/classes that you don't have your wrappers for. E.g. how do I work with creating/opening/interacting with other workbooks?

Great job guys! I'd love to know bit more about the exact benefits of using Python and a few simple examples of how to use it... then again, I am just a casual excel user so I am likely not the right audience

Thanks! We have some basic examples up on our blog. A good one is blackjack in Excel [1] - it shows off some of the versatility of Python as compared to VBA, like the ability to run a script in the background and have it respond to user actions.

[1] https://datanitro.com/blog/2012/07/31/Interactive-Spreadshee...

Congrats guys love this stuff have been using it for a couple of months. The people who work on the Excel team were really impressed when I demoed it to them. Best of luck!

I think this is so awesome, I spent a summer as a lowly intern for a bank once trying to write up an entire debt model in VBA (bad idea on so many fronts...), and I wanted to gouge my eyes out at the end. I would've given an arm and a leg to be able to write in Python, as I'm sure many others...so excited to see this happen!

Why the name change?

New one makes more sense and at least slightly clues you into what the product is.

Wait, DataNitro is more descriptive than IronSpread?

Who cares, it's better. IronSpread brings to mind really solid margarine or perhaps cream cheese.

Yes. Not Data manipulation.

One of the founders here - people kept confusing us with IronPython, and/or assuming we use IronPython.

Might want to change the address in your user profile as well!

Is there currently any way to use Python in a Google Document spreadsheet?

Use a Python-to-JS compiler with Google Apps Script.

FYI, for Java there's XLLoop (open source), JExcel (commercial) and Obba (commercial). Haven't used these myself, but looking into it.

xlloop works for a bunch of languages, python, ruby, etc... But as far as i remember, xlloop is more of an RPC facility.

Oh wow, YC!! I'm sure the product would be awesome. Let me check out the link.

Any comparison with ResolverOne and why they have a better chance to succeed?

Awesome work guys.

Congrats guys.

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