From: Chad Perrin <code@...>
Date: 2011-04-04T08:49:44+09:00
Subject: Re: Lambda Shambda

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On Mon, Apr 04, 2011 at 05:56:19AM +0900, Josh Cheek wrote:
>=20
> The page says "All of the VBA code is unprotected, so you are free to
> see how it works." So that implies to me that this is not what we are
> talking about, though, because it was Chad Perrin's initial assumption
> that programming in Excel meant VBA, but Mike responded with
> "Unfortunately most people think the words 'Excel' and 'programming'
> must equal VBA. [...] the accomplished S# programmer only uses [VBA] as
> a last resort." ("S#" seems to be a name Mike made up for programming
> in Excel).

I didn't quite make the statement that "programming" in Excel necessarily
means VBA -- but trying to do anything nontrivial in Excel without using
either VBA or some other language that can manipulate Excel from the
outside is an exercise in either a mildly perverse spirit of tinkering
fun or purely masochistic insanity.  I suspect Mike's statement that "the
accomplished [Excel] [user] only uses [VBA] as a last resort" was related
more to the fact that one should use the simplest functionality of Excel
unless one really *needs* more than that people should be writing Web
frameworks in Excel without ever using a macro language.  I don't think
even Mike is *that* crazed in support of Excel as a programming
"language".


>=20
> I did try loading it up in Open Office, but it uses VBA macros, which I
> couldn't get to work. I was surprised to see that it looked decent (
> https://s3.amazonaws.com/josh.cheek/scratch/excel-game.png) so
> apparently Excel has more powerful formatting capabilities than I
> realized. But, web browsers have powerful formatting, and that doesn't
> make them programming languages.

As I commented elsewhere, Firefox is every bit a Turing complete
programming language as MS Excel -- which is to say, it *isn't*, in my
opinion.  It just comes with a Turing complete programming language (or
two) embedded in it, and offers a lot of other capabilities as well.

--=20
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]

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