Excel’s built-in Python support should simplify the workflow. According to Microsoft, users can add Python code to a spreadsheet without leaving the Excel interface.

Beyond Excel, the team also took inspiration from tools and languages like Pascal, Mathematica and Miranda, a functional programming language developed in the 1980s.

Just as open-source development revolutionized SQL, it also rejuvenated programming languages that work with data. Languages like Python and R, though dating back to the 1990s, are relatively new ...

Microsoft researchers are working on a new, future Excel feature that combines natural language and automatic programming technologies to make queries and data analysis easier.

With LAMBDA, the Excel formula language is Turing-complete. User-defined functions can thus compute anything without resorting to imperative languages (e.g., VBA, JavaScript) ...