[fzumstein]

As the author of said second class add-in, let me just guess that your most popular feature request was adding the "Import from xlsx" functionality...which describes the whole issue: it's always Excel + something, never something instead of Excel.

[breckognize]

My apologies, that came off harsher than I intended. I've used xlwings in previous jobs to complete Excel automation tasks, so thank you for building it. xlwings is one of the projects that motivated me to start Row Zero. My main issue with it, and other Excel add-ins, is they break the promise of an .xlsx file as a self-contained virtual machine of code and data. I can no longer just send the .xlsx file - I need the recipient to install (e.g.) Python first. This makes collaboration a nightmare.

I wanted a spreadsheet interface, which my business partners need, but with a way for power users (me) to do more complicated stuff in Python instead of VBA.

To borrow your phrasing, our thesis is that it has to be Excel-compatible spreadsheet + something, not necessarily Excel + something. It's early days for us, but we've seen a couple publicly traded companies switch off Excel to Row Zero to eliminate the security risks that come with Excel's desktop model.

[fzumstein]

No offense taken, and happy that xlwings was an inspiration for creating Row Zero! I don't really buy the security issues though for being the reason for switching from Excel to Row Zero. Yes, Excel has security issues, but so does the cloud, but at least the issues with Excel can be dealt with: disable VBA macros on a company level, run Excel on airgapped computers, etc. Promising that your cloud won't be hacked or is unintentionally leaking information is impossible, no matter how much auditing and certification you're going through. The relatively recent addition of xlwings Server fixes pretty much all of the issues you encountered in your previous company: user don't need a local installation of Python, but the Office admin just pushes an Office.js add-in to them and their done. No sensitive credentials etc. are required to be stored on the end-users computer or spreadsheet either as you can take advantage of SSO and can manage user roles on Microsoft Entra ID (that companies are using already anyways).