Re:XMLUI
by airstrike on Sunday July 20, 2025 @10:59AM
(#44625801)
Spreadsheet is a form of programming, so you can build anything there.
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Spreadsheets traditionally don’t support iteration (loops) or recursion. In Excel you had to go the VBA route for actual programming.
In my hands they do
Re:XMLUI
by johnisgood on Sunday July 20, 2025 @12:25PM
(#44626706)
That is the spirit.
In the distant future:
$ ./myapp.xlsx --port 8080
My App listening on port 8080
Loaded 1337 rowsThe future is now with Microsoft Excel Web Services, which is part of SharePoint.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/general-dev...
Re:XMLUI
by aruggirello on Sunday July 20, 2025 @01:13PM
(#44627172)
In other hands, I have seen Excel spreadsheet hundred-products pricelists become a freaking tangle of merged cells, multiple rows for products, spelling mistakes, multiple spaces everywhere, and price cells hand-formatted. And I had to export the contents to machine readable .csv...
That sounds like a nightmare to untangle. On the other hand, it would be very satisfying to go from the original pricelists to a new, cleaned format!
Not a common opinion, but one I happen to share.
Re:XMLUI
by cluckindan on Sunday July 20, 2025 @01:44PM
(#44627459)
Let’s see an HTTP server in an Excel sheet.
I didn’t check their claim, but https://github.com/michaelneu/webxcel:
“Webxcel creates a full-fledged RESTful web backend from your Microsoft Excel workbooks. It is written in 100% plain Visual Basic macros and comes with a lot of handy tools to help you build the next big thing.”
Re:XMLUI
by cluckindan on Sunday July 20, 2025 @03:47PM
(#44628666)
Ha! Sure beats the pure bash HTTP server. ;-)
That's a disingenuous take. You could write one, but it won't be allowed to connect to anything other than itself because Excel doesn't give it the network stack or IO it needs. Unless you use VBA, of course.
Re:XMLUI
by shortstuffsushi on Sunday July 20, 2025 @03:00PM
(#44628234)
Maybe just me but seeing side by side "spreadsheets are all you need" and ".ai" seem to be somewhat uh... competing claims.
It's a play on "Attention is all you need", the seminal AI paper.
The author of that website implemented GPT-2 inference on Excel
Fairly sure Excel can get access to the entire .NET runtime.
Plus, someone made a MOV only compiler, soon...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/client-developer/ex...
Calling user-defined functions (UDFs) from a worksheet is as simple as calling built-in functions: You enter the function via a cell formula.