I have seen some tomfuckery in my time, but this one is absolutely baffling.

#Excel

@Rhodium103 I'll admit that looks weird, however the reason for running the Python in the cloud is so that a Python payload can't maliciously access resources on your computer, install malware, or otherwise pose a security risk to your assets. Like most security issues, it is a trade-off.

@VisualStuart @Rhodium103 Did anyone explain the need for Python in Excel to begin with?

I'm still waiting to see the reasoning behind it

@hu_logic @Rhodium103 Architect John Lam explains some of the reasoning for this feature in his LinkedIn post, and the linked article.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7099776889065537536
John Lam posted about Python in Excel is now a thing! A project of a lifetime. | LinkedIn

Python in Excel is now a thing! 1,464 days ago, I met Keyur Patel and Shaofeng Zhu in a conference room in Building 17. They showed me a Hackathon project that… | 14 comments on LinkedIn

@hu_logic @VisualStuart @Rhodium103

Excel is the most popular spreadsheet and data visualization software by corporations and normies by a margin so enormous even SQL variants or stuff by IBM don't compare.

There's stuff it's not great at on its own. Power BI, Power Analytics, Data Tools, and related packages give some extra power but usually at a relatively high learning cost that isn't transferable. Python offers a way to do a lot of stuff more easily and can leverage skills people might have learned without an expensive Microsoft Certified training course.

Sure, it'd be great if Orange3, PySpread, or Mito were ready for primetime in a corporate environment but they're just not. Adding the power of the most popular programming language for data science to the most popular data thing makes sense.