[airstrike]

> We wanted an alternative to VBA, but got an alternative to the Excel formula language. indeed

> Integrating the Jupyter notebook cells inside the Excel grid was a mistake. 100% agreed. this seems like the typical Microsoft behavior where the team A was pushing their product and won over team B, even though it's not really what users needed

> Python in Excel isn’t suitable for Python beginners nor for interactive data analysis. exactly. it is my humble opinion that Microsoft doesn't really understand how Excel is used IRL

also this bit is gold:

> What I find interesting though is the multiline editing experience of PY cells. Why not give the native Excel formula language an upgrade, so I don’t have to write LET expressions such as the following one (that I still find very hard to read):

    =LET(x, 1, y, 2, x + y)

> Instead, allow me to write it like so?

    let x = 1
    let y = 2
    x + y

and we haven't even talked about =LAMBDA()!

> Also, why not turn Excel tables into a native Excel DataFrame? Give them attributes instead of sticking to the functional approach and you’d be looking at something like this:

> =MyTable[#All].GROUPBY(...)

> Lot’s of possibilities to integrate the pandas functionality in a way that feels more native to Excel!

Jackpot. I'm literally building this formula language in a new spreadsheet app (it's early days but I'm eager to share it on HN when the MVP is ready!) and am writing a paper on dataframes vs. spreadsheets, so reading this has warmed my heart on this rainy afternoon

also as a former Django lover (I still love it, i just don't use it as much), `=MyTable[#All].GROUPBY(...)` reminds me of its ORM...

"hmm emoji" indeed.....

[Closi]

You can do multiline formulas in the advanced formula environment, but still follows the same syntax as the formula language (with comments). i.e.:

=LET(

    x,1, // assign 1 to y

    y,2, // assign 2 to y

    x+y  // add x and y

)

Same with LAMBDAs

[layer8]

You can use Alt+Enter to create multiline formulas in normal formula entry. In addition, the formula bar can be dragged down (or press Ctrl+Shift+U) to be multiline [0]. One drawback is that you can’t use the Tab key for indentation and have to use spaces.

[0] https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/formula-bar-exce...

[snthpy]

Hi,

I'd love to read your paper when it's ready.