Microsoft Considers Adding Python as an Official Scripting Language to Excel
According to a topic on Excel’s feedback hub published few days back, Microsoft considers adding Python to Excel. This topic has turned out to be the vastly voted feature request, ever since the news was on the hub.
PYTHON TURNS DIFFICULTY TO SIMPLICITY
Python is one of the most popular programming languages among developers, due to its easiness in coding and its flexibility. To know where it ranks while compared to other programming languages, Python ranks second on the PYPL programming languages ranking. According to the RedMonk Programming Language Rankings, it ranks third, and fourth in the TIOBE index.
If Python for Excel is approved by Microsoft, one can easily work with Excel documents, Excel data, and with its core functions, using Python scripts replacing the current VBA scripts.
This Python scripting, would not only turn out to be a replacement for VBA but also could be a replacement for field functions (=SUM(A1:A2)).
The idea of having Python as an official Excel scripting language was highly appreciated by many users on board. Moreover, the users also marked that if Microsoft goes forward in wiring Python within Excel, they also would require Python in other Microsoft Office apps.
After watching the news on the hub, many users and developers said that Microsoft should definitely choose Python and during this process, it should also decide whether it would be Python with a .Net library–which has separate standard and core libraries–or IronPython. Later, this has to be done in a process that provides exactly same libraries and user-written code to work in the same way throughout other Microsoft Office products.
Though Microsoft would be elated in adding such a feature for their users, still, not much information is known about this project. Until then we can expect great bombshells from Microsoft with user side benefits.