Ask Slashdot: Spreadsheet With Decent Programming Language?

First time accepted submitter slartibartfastatp writes "Spreadsheets are very flexible tools for data analysis and transformations, the obvious options being MS Excel and LibreOffice. However, I found increasingly infuriating to deal with the VBA--dialect functions or (even worse) its translated versions. Is there any spreadsheet that allows usage of a decent programming language in its formulae? I found PySpread intriguing, but still very beta (judging from its latest release version 0.2.3). Perl or even javascript would be better options than =AVERAGE(). Do you know any viable alternatives?"

Comments

Re:Already there

[rtfa-troll]

Excel can already use VBA, which in turn can use IronPython.

Done.

Awesome; but not quite done. At that point you can run an X86 emulator inside it and boot Linux. Then you can run Firefox inside it and finally, you will have access to a sensible language.

Actually, this is one of the best Ask Slashdots ever. A language war enclosed inside a user interface design war enclosed inside a programmer pet hate.

Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps

[hosecoat]

What, exactly is wrong with =AVERAGE()?

It's not too bad, but it's not too good either.

Re:Already there

[m.ducharme]

And you can do it all in Emacs.

Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps

[Drishmung]

Javascript is not too bad, but I suspect that it won't help in this case because the problem is not merely the language but the mind-rottingly horrible object model.

If you can keep it to rslt = function(cell1, cell2, cell3) then it's OK, but in practice it seems to involve rslt = use.of.some.object.you.didnt.expect where goat.sacrifice(was.successful) [but.I.lied.to.you]

Re:Definition

[Nutria]

bash uses "then" and it's a great language.

Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps

[asylumx]

=Woosh() FTFY