this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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Money quote:

Excel requires some skill to use (to the point where high-level Excel is a competitive sport), and AI is mostly an exercise in deskilling its users and humanity at large.

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[–] jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 130 points 1 day ago (52 children)

There are things that could be done to improve Excel. For instance, fully integrate python and allow it to be used to create custom functions. Then, maybe one day, VBA can ride off into the sunset where it belongs.

Adding Copilot to Excel is not an improvement because Copilot and all other LLM based platforms frequently barfs out totally incorrect information about how to do something in Excel.

"You do that using formula."

No, I can't, you worthless pile of shit because THAT FORMULA DOESNT EXIST.

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 64 points 1 day ago (23 children)

Integrated python scripts in excel sounds like a malware developers dream.

[–] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Surely there’s some sort of sandboxing that could be done? Like start by disallowing sys calls entirely

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 7 points 1 day ago

Definitely, but sandboxes can be escaped, and you can't protect everything via sandbox. Apparently its all cloud anyway, but if it were local and sandboxed, there are still exploits like rowhammer and spectre that may cause further risks.

Its taken years to get browser sandboxes to where they are, and even they get broken every so often.

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