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by superb_dev 737 days ago
Python in excel is a feature I would only expect to be used by power users. Someone who spends a lot of time in excel. Calling these people “non-programmers” isn’t true, excel itself is a pretty esoteric programming language.

I personally don’t think python is the problem here, but if their users can learn python they can certainly learn lua.
2 comments
smcin 737 days ago
That's exactly what I said above: most Excel users are non-programmers. Hence Python in Excel would only be used by a subset of Excel power users.

Moreover, having to pay $$ recurring subscriptions for that stack to run open-source software (Python) they could run for free elsewhere mean it'll only be used by commercial/enterprise Windows-stack users who are already locked into some legacy workflow/data built around/glued to Excel. For example, financial users, or users who have some expensive license seat of some enterprise product(s). Means an even smaller subset of users.

We're saying the same thing.

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superb_dev 737 days ago
Are we? I’m arguing that lua would have been a better choice than python.

Any traditional programming language that you put in excel is going to be a feature mostly for power users, and I think they could pick up lua just as easy as python

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jimbokun 737 days ago
They could, but a lot more people already know Python than Lua.
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smcin 737 days ago
Most Excel users (not the power users, just the 1.1 billion everyday ones, including many of the enterprise ones) don't know how to program in any language. You're coming at this with a HN mindset.

"Python vs Lua" is not even on their radar. And even if it was, their criteria would be dominated by platform lockin and compatibility with other licenses (e.g. commercial SQL, Tableau, MSFT, etc.). Not by "which open-source language?"

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extr 737 days ago
IMO you're the one coming in with an HN mindset. Python has massive mindshare even among people who have never programmed. It is the numeric computing language du jour. In any given financial company there are definitely already python users. Lua, a language primarily known for plugin scripting, with no numeric computing libraries, that has zero mindshare among non career programmers, is not even in the conversation.
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smcin 737 days ago
Nobody here has made a case for Lua in Excel. I wrote "Python vs Lua" is not even on the radar of most Excel users, not even the subset that are programmers.

(Why are people here aggressively misreading everything I type, today?)

> Python... is the numeric computing language du jour. In any given financial company there are definitely already python users.

The original post didn't say "financial Excel users". Not all Excel users are financial; most aren't. I've worked with legal informatics users, e-commerce users, bioinformatic users, among others. Those sectors never use Excel for numeric computing, IME (drawing the occasional chart isn't numeric computing). They are more familiar with SQL, SQL macros, SQL query generators, importing/exporting to/from SaaS, etc. Like I said.

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