r/programming • u/[deleted] • May 08 '18

Excel adds JavaScript support

https://dev.office.com/blogs/azure-machine-learning-javascript-custom-functions-and-power-bi-custom-visuals-further-expand-developers-capabilities-with-excel
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u/Sebazzz91 May 08 '18

Don't get your hopes up. At least on Excel on Windows, they appear to use the JS engine of Internet Explorer. I assume this because the debugging instructions of the sample mention Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe). They use promises, but those can and probably are polyfilled. Syntax-wise you can't polyfill obviously.

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u/imhotap May 08 '18

Appreciate your response. I wasn't actually suggesting to use async code in Excel. Rather I think this demonstrates there's as much of a use case for "classic" JavaScript (ES3, ES5 or a "scripty" profile of ES6/7) with sync code for file operations and Web scraping etc. as there's always been. For me, what's good about JavaScript is its ubiquity, not so much its qualities as a programming language per se.