Excel can do some pretty impressive things.<p>Another cool-but-probably-useless example:<p>Excel as a 3d engine<p><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php?print=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel...</a><p>Check out the videos to get a quick understanding of what they did.
The same thing is possible in Excel VBA by creating a<p>Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)<p>in the appropriate worksheet, which will be called when a cell is changed. I don't see any reason why a complete blackjack game would be impossible.<p>I am however sure that the python code is much nicer than the VBA code to do so, and if it weren't for the distribution trouble (requiring a plugin to be installed for all users of the workbook) I'd definitely use IronSpread.
If it's python, if i'm able to use python modules and call functions from excel ( udf ), why IronSpread folks pushes for useless demos ?<p>Show me some network stuff. Show me how can i write a simple crm ( no not like the one on their blog ) " with " centeral db and gives me ability to work with my coworkers together. Show me how can i gather information from different sources ( web, db v.s. ) and analyse it.
Or there's always the lighter weight option pyspread[1] in which cells are objects, works with numpy arrays and any module.<p>[1]: <a href="http://manns.github.com/pyspread/" rel="nofollow">http://manns.github.com/pyspread/</a>
For a bit of a laugh I wrote a Conway's Game of Life in Excel using cells as pixels. I could get quite smooth animation up to a screen size of around 200x200 cells. The main bottleneck was the need to check every cell in the grid, every generation, which quickly becomes hard for VBA to do smoothly. It was fun however to see Excel doing animation.
Later year students have taken control of our entire pilot plant for our electrical 'controls and instrumentation' engineering with excel.<p>Very impressive, I used to scoff at the engineers using excel (I'm a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering student) but it can do some excellent stuff.
speaking of, it says on their FAQ that they will be able to call python function from excel mid-july. Update? Or maybe we're talking a different year, not 2012?
I wouldnt be surprised if theese guys are beeing bought by MS sooner rather than later.<p>Replacing VBA feels like it should be quite high on the priority list.
So? Play PacMan in excel:
<a href="http://www.cypherhackz.net/archives/2006/10/05/play-pacman-in-excel/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cypherhackz.net/archives/2006/10/05/play-pacman-i...</a>