Beyond Excel, the team also took inspiration from tools and languages like Pascal, Mathematica and Miranda, a functional programming language developed in the 1980s.

Excel’s built-in Python support should simplify the workflow. According to Microsoft, users can add Python code to a spreadsheet without leaving the Excel interface.

Analyze uses natural-language tools and automatic-programming-generation techniques to allow users to perform basic calculations and other analytic tasks inside Excel spreadsheets.

With LAMBDA, the Excel formula language is Turing-complete. User-defined functions can thus compute anything without resorting to imperative languages (e.g., VBA, JavaScript) ...