[localhost]

As a counterpoint to a lot of the speculation on this thread, if you're interested in learning more about how and why we designed Python in Excel, I wrote up a doc (that is quite old but captures the core design quite well) here [1]. Disclosure: I was a founding member of the design team for the feature.

[1] https://notes.iunknown.com/python-in-excel/Book+of+Python+in...

[hypercube33]

I'm genuinely curious why python instead of something like PowerShell for Excel specifically. Seems a little out of the farm but I also get how it's a more adopted language.

[localhost]

Python is the most popular language for data analysis with a rich ecosystem of existing libraries for that task.

Incidentally I've worked on many products in the past, and I've never seen anything that approaches the level of product-market-fit that this feature has.

Also, this is the work of many people at the company. To them go the real credit of shipping and getting it out the door to customers.

[ttyprintk]

To associate Excel with all those third-party Python analytical packages. Monte Carlo comes to mind; in the distant past, that was an expensive third-party Excel plug-in.

[mrgoldenbrown]

This was interesting but seems focused on how, not why. Like why not python as alternative to VBA, and why cloud only.