Microsoft is bringing popular programming language Python to Excel. A public preview of the feature is available today, allowing Excel users to manipulate and analyze data from Python.
You won’t need to install any additional software or set up an add-on to access the functionality, as Python integration in Excel will be part of Excel’s built-in connectors and Power Query. Microsoft is also adding a new PY function that allows Python data to be exposed within the grid of an Excel spreadsheet. Through a partnership with Anaconda, an enterprise Python repository, popular Python libraries like pandas, statsmodels, and Matplotlib will be available in Excel.
Exactly why I hope it will flop and they decide it’s not worth the money. It’s disgusting how tech companies take something free and try to monetize it by hiding it under a veneer of “accessibility” and “integration”. One can only hope that information regarding FOSS will remain easily accessible and that the group this update is targeting is insignificant enough. I doubt any serious data scientist would opt to Excel + Python over just Python for big enough data sets, and the average Excel user, let’s face it, is unlikely to learn Python.