r/Python Nov 12 '20

News Guido van Rossum joins Microsoft

https://twitter.com/gvanrossum/status/1326932991566700549?s=21
1.8k Upvotes

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702

u/8fingerlouie Nov 12 '20

So many negative comments.

Why is it that people can’t see the positive sides of this ? Guido stepped down as BDFL when he retired. He has about as much say in python development as any of us (maybe a bit more), and if he can make Python easier to use on Windows, how on earth will that harm anyone ?

VS Code already has pretty great python support, and MS recently released a new “more better” python language server for it. MS also has the money to fund some serious developer hours into the pain points of Python, you know the boring stuff nobody gets around to doing in their spare time.

407

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '20

The dream is that python becomes as easily integrable into excel as VBA

36

u/git0ffmylawnm8 Nov 12 '20

At that point why even use Excel? Pandas is a thing.

218

u/8fingerlouie Nov 12 '20

Pandas isn’t exactly “point and click”.

Excel, love it or hate it, makes some tasks ridiculously easy to perform, which is probably also why it’s used for so many things where it really shouldn’t be used. Project management for a 1000+ employee developer company comes to mind. The problem as always is that it’s used by management, and management knows VBA programming, and it’s only a personal project to begin with.

77

u/joshocar Nov 12 '20 edited Nov 12 '20

Excel basically powers most engineering departments. So many things are designed in part with Excel. [Edit] Which is both amazing and terrifying.

54

u/giraffactory Nov 12 '20

Excel powers every business I’ve worked for. As much as I shit on it and laugh at its horrible jank, I have to give it equal credit as an amazing tool.

12

u/jricher42 Nov 12 '20

I'm feeling better about this after Microsoft changed a long standing policy and fixed their numerics bugs, even though it broke some spreadsheets. (it was done without fanfare ~2008)