Category talk:Excel

Personally, I think Excel is a bona fide programming language. When I worked for Microsoft Research a claim was made in a lab seminar, by a language theory researcher who shall remain nameless at present but is a leading in the Haskell community, that Excel was by far the most widely used purely functional programming language.

--Brnikat (talk) 20:02, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Good day!

Hmm... Excluding VBA from the topic, Excel's built-in functions/formulas can be considered a programming language. However, I think (just my opinion) Microsoft did not build/made Excel as a programming language/IDE (since it is a spreadsheet program).

If it is necessary, feel free to edit the category. Thanks! --Simple9371 (talk) 03:02, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I half remember reading about how researchers in Conways game of life had arranged generators of gliders to interact and were thinking that by arranging starting positions they might theoretically produce a turing machine. Despite that, I wouldn't call Conways game of life a programming language and neither would most people call Excel a programming language.

In extremis, an expert can make a point by saying that a spreadsheet could be thought of as a functional programming language, but even they might concede that there point is made because it is an extreme view probably shocking their audience out of their complacency.

--Paddy3118 (talk) 06:14, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

A fully working computer has been implemented in Life. The URL is http://rendell-attic.org/gol/utm/index.htm and needless to say it's a complex colony!

--Brnikat (talk) 10:24, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately there is a site limitation that does not allow images to be uploaded. This might affect how graphical solutions to problems can be shown on Rosetta Code. I did this several years ago which is an oocalc entry.
--Paddy3118 (talk) 06:23, 12 July 2015 (UTC)