[ExI] ai class at stanford

[Emlyn]

On 24 August 2011 23:11, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 6:27 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>>
>>>... On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
>> Subject: Re: [ExI] ai class at stanford
>>
>> 2011/8/23 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
>>>> So in that loose sense, a spreadsheet with macros could be considered an
>> object oriented language, ja?
>>
>>>...Not really, IMO.  It is possible to use the concept of objects in non-OO
>> languages, and I believe what you describe is an example of such.
>>
>> OK cool.  I like the spreadsheet programming environment in some ways,
>> because it lets you see everything that is going on.  If you think of each
>> individual sheet as an interchangeable module,  the language can even be
>> considered modular and top-down.  A sheet or a column of cells fits at least
>> the strict definition of a user defined function and a sheet, column or even
>> perhaps a single cell fits at least the strict definition of a user defined
>> function.
>>
>> I am pushing this notion for a reason.  The engineering environment in which
>> I work has enormous resources already in excel sheets.  An example would be
>> an extremely sophisticated atmosphere model, which has evolved over the
>> years, and takes into account F10.7, geomagnetic index, latitude, longitude,
>> altitude, time of day, temperature, pressure, a bunch of other minor
>> factors, and it works really well, but the catch is, it's a spreadsheet.
>> Porting all that to any other language would be a nightmare.  That
>> atmosphere model looks to me like an object.  Pressure as a function of
>> yakkity yak and bla bla would be a user defined function.
>
> What we really need for spreadsheets to more fully reach their full
> potential are:
> 1) Hosted in the cloud (ala Google Spreadsheets)
> 2) Ability to reference values from other spreadsheets with live
> updates (Hyper-references)
> 3) Ability to access data from anywhere inside the spreadsheet. (HTTP,
> web services, etc.)
> 4) Ability to send notices from Excel to other environments. (email,
> sms, web services, etc.)

Have you checked out the extent of what you can do in Google
Spreadsheets? I think it ticks all those boxes. Particularly you want
Google Apps Script.

http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/

>
> Give me that and I'll be all over programming in Excel.
>
> -Kelly

Noooooooo!

-- 
Emlyn

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