[tonygrue]

I'd be over the moon to see one change to Excel. Native support for a language other than VBA. Perhaps the CLR. Perhaps Java/Typescript. Just something (optional) for programmers who want to use Excel and not want to deal with the garbage that VBA is.

Some workarounds exist, but afaik they require collaborators to also have the tool install, which is dead in the water.

I know MS has considered it, I'm still pretty surprised they've haven't followed through.

[dolmen]

MS hasn't just considered it. They have done it. This is called Visual Studio Tools for Office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Tools_for_Office...

[tonygrue]

I've built plugins with VSTO (for Outlook) when I was at MS, but my memory is that it’s dependent on a plugin being distributed and not available for native use embedded into the excel workbooks.

You have to install Visual Studio, compile a plugin, register the plugin, and then from VBA you can call out to that COM interface if you'd like. Even if Excel users could overcome those hurdles, you still break the collaboration flow (i.e. just sharing an excel file).

Looking a little deeper, it looks like they're starting to support Javascript for the newer cross-platform add-in system (and also VSTO), but it looks like you still have to distribute your JS add-in via a web-service as opposed to being fully integrated into Excel and XLSM files.

The bit of just being able to share the XLSM file and users using Excel with no other installs or special network access, is really the make or break for me and non-professional programmer user scenarios I've seen.

[kgwgk]

Microsoft would also like to see that change, that’s why they tried to kill VBA. The reason for not following through (in killing VBA, because they definitely support and prefer other extension mechanisms) was pushback from users.

[grep_name]

Wait, really? I've been working in a thoroughly MS ecosystem for the first time this year, and I can't seem to find any evidence that they've tried to kill VBA based on how often I run into situations where VBA (or worse, VBscript) is the ONLY option, especially when working with excel's developer functions or writing expressions in SSRS utilities. Did the users push back because the options they were presented with were use VBA or have no scripting capabilities?

[kgwgk]

To be fair, they denied that VBA was at risk: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/architectsrule/2008/01/23/v...

But the fact is that it was missing from macos Excel for a while and they wanted people to migrate to VSTO: https://searchwindevelopment.techtarget.com/tip/On-migrating...

[ChrisCinelli]

Google Sheet can run function and macro written in Javascript. That is what I use.

[tluyben2]

Although I don't like JS, I use that too, but it's pretty half-baked tooling compared to what Excel has. I would rather like to see just being able to point out some Google Cloud Functions and use those as spreadsheet commands. That would be powerful. Now you can but you have to do plumbing and you cannot reuse libs over sheets unless you make them public (last I checked, I could be wrong on this one but I read posts from as far back as 2011 where 'they are working on it'); you have to copy/paste. Yuck.

I wish someone (MS, ...) would do something, but I work on Linux so no Excel for me. And I do like very large datasets to be in the cloud anyway and not killing my laptop.

There should be more competitors in the space. I know there are a few, but they are not really competitors, just more niche / boutique products that attack a specific case, so you need to go back to Sheets or Excel anyway.

[magicnubs]

> I know MS has considered it, I'm still pretty surprised they've haven't followed through.

Didn't they add Javascript support in 2018?

I agree though. They brought up that they were considering Python3 integration like 2 years ago and haven't said a word about it since.

[DonHopkins]

You've been able to control all the Microsoft Office and other apps like Internet Explorer through "out of process" OLE automation for ages, and Python has a great win32com module (part of pywin32) for controlling "in process" and "out of process" OLE controls / ActiveX components.

https://pypi.org/project/pywin32/

http://timgolden.me.uk/pywin32-docs/html/com/win32com/HTML/d...

Intgrating COM into Python is one approach, but another approach is integrating Python into Active Scripting. (The age old extending/embedding debate.)

https://docs.python.org/3/extending/index.html

And Active Scripting (1996) let you plug different "in process" interpreters into the web browser and other multi-lingually scriptable applications, and call back and forth between (many but not all) ActiveX components and OLE automation interfaces more directly, without using slow "out of process" remote procedure calls. (Some components still require running in separate process, like Word, Excel, etc, which work, but are just slower to call).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Scripting

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1m...

>The Microsoft Windows Script Host (WSH) (formerly named Windows Scripting Host) is an automation technology for Microsoft Windows operating systems that provides scripting abilities comparable to batch files, but with a wider range of supported features.

>It is language-independent in that it can make use of different Active Scripting language engines. By default, it interprets and runs plain-text JScript (.JS and .JSE files) and VBScript (.VBS and .VBE files).

>Users can install different scripting engines to enable them to script in other languages, for instance PerlScript. The language independent filename extension WSF can also be used. The advantage of the Windows Script File (.WSF) is that it allows the user to use a combination of scripting languages within a single file.

>WSH engines include various implementations for the Rexx, BASIC, Perl, Ruby, Tcl, PHP, JavaScript, Delphi, Python, XSLT, and other languages.

>Windows Script Host is distributed and installed by default on Windows 98 and later versions of Windows. It is also installed if Internet Explorer 5 (or a later version) is installed. Beginning with Windows 2000, the Windows Script Host became available for use with user login scripts.

[phonon]

JS functions just became GA.

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/office-ex...

[o_nate]

I dislike VBA too, but it would be easier to stomach if Excel at least had a decent IDE. Compare the VBA editor in Excel with Visual Studio and the difference is stark.