Microsoft To Excel Users: Be Careful With That Python

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp spotted a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) this week with the Microsoft engineering team that created Python in Excel, a new feature that makes it possible to natively combine Python and Excel analytics in Excel workbooks. (Copilot integration is coming soon). Redditors expressed a wish to be able to run Python in environments other than the confines of the locked down, price-to-be-determined Microsoft Azure cloud containers employed by Python in Excel. But "There were three main reasons behind starting with the cloud (as a GDPR Compliant Microsoft 365 Connected experience) first," MicrosoftExcelTeam explained: 1. Running Python securely on a local machine is a difficult problem. We treat all Python code in the workbook as untrusted, so we execute it in a hypervisor-isolated container on Azure that does not have any outbound network access. Python code and the data that it operates on is sent to be executed in the container. The Microsoft-licensed Python environment in the container is provided by Anaconda and was prepared using their stringent security practices as documented here. 2. Sharing Excel workbooks with others is a really important scenario. We wanted to ensure that the Python code in a workbook you share behaves the same when your teammates open it a" without requiring them to install and manage Python. 3. We need to ensure that the Python in Excel feature always works for our customers. The value of Python is in its ecosystem of libraries, not just in providing a Python interpreter. But managing a local Python environment is challenging even for the most experienced developers. By running on Azure, we remove the need for users or their systems administrators to maintain a local installation of Python on every machine that uses the feature in their organization... So, how does one balance tradeoffs between increased security and ease-of-maintenance with the loss of functionality and increased costs when it comes to programming language use? Is it okay to just give up on making certain important basic functionality available, as Microsoft is doing here with Python and has done in the past by not supporting Excel VBA in the Cloud and no longer making BASIC available on PCs and Macs? Microsoft's team added at one point that "For our initial release, we are targeting data analytics scenarios, and bringing the power of Python analytics libraries into Excel. "We believe the approach wea(TM)ve taken will appeal to analysts who use both Excel and Python Notebooks in their workflows. Today, these users need to import/export data and have no way of creating a self-contained artifact that can be easily and securely shared with their colleagues."

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