Re:Excel team considering Python as scripting language: aski...
by sametmax on Friday December 15, 2017 @12:56AM
(#15929919)
The reason Python is a popular choice is because it's a very polyvalent language (not specialized for any task but quite good at a lot of them) BUT the data analysis tookit in the Python ecosystem rocks (numpy, pandas, etc). Lua doesn't have a good data anaylisis story. C# is not made for scripting. VBA is not great outside of Office.
Now given that cPython 3.6 has f-string, and that you probably will use string formatting a lot if you script a MS product, I would implement this version specifically. It's the most recent stable version of the standard implementation anyway.
Actually no, I would not implement anything. I would embed the cPython 3.6 interpreter and stdlib, and just provide a binding to it. This limit the problem of bad / inconsistent implementations that crippled MS products in the past.
Then I would say "we guaranty to provide a 3.6 compatible cPython + stdlib for the next x years" so that people can be confident to write Python stuff. Otherwise, a bad implementation would be worst than no implementation at all.
Now given that cPython 3.6 has f-string, and that you probably will use string formatting a lot if you script a MS product, I would implement this version specifically. It's the most recent stable version of the standard implementation anyway.
Actually no, I would not implement anything. I would embed the cPython 3.6 interpreter and stdlib, and just provide a binding to it. This limit the problem of bad / inconsistent implementations that crippled MS products in the past.
Then I would say "we guaranty to provide a 3.6 compatible cPython + stdlib for the next x years" so that people can be confident to write Python stuff. Otherwise, a bad implementation would be worst than no implementation at all.