
Microsoft Excel: Revolutionary 3D Game Engine? - walrus
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php?print=1
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alanctgardner2
Besides the author whipping out the old, apocryphal 'QWERTY is the worst
layout on purpose' factoid, very cool. The thing in Excel that always made my
eyes bleed was nesting IF statements: the else block is passed as the second
argument, leading to ridiculous bracket requirements. I suppose the way the
devs would have you do it is put one IF per cell in some hidden cells, and SUM
the results.

In short, Excel is powerful, but requires contorting your brain to get stuff
done. It's like MS tricked the world into teaching millions of non-technical
people BrainFuck.

~~~
jahewson
IF as an expression isn't brainfuck, it's functional programming!

~~~
alanctgardner2
I just wish it had syntax like JS promises, so the closing brackets weren't
such a mess...

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mjn
There are some interesting bits in the LtU discussion of this article a few
years ago, though I wish it would've continued a bit longer: <http://lambda-
the-ultimate.org/node/2710>

And, an HN discussion of a more negative article about Excel as a programming
environment, focusing on the fragility and bug-proneness of Excel models that
have become widespread in the financial sector:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5198187>

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tlarkworthy
I have previously used a spread sheet to: implement a Runge–Kutta integrator
and simulate a pendulum, and implement a back propagation neural network.

Both times I had previously tried and failed to implement them in a proper
language. Errors were had to debug in a batch process (loss of energy in
pendulum, no learning in the NN). Excel/OpenOffice was great for being able to
instantly propagate state through N steps, whilst simultaneously debugging the
transition function of said state. Once my formulas were correct I translated
it to a better language of course.

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plasma
Thought the OP meant the actual 3D game engine in Excel 97.

Check out <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gYb5GUs0dM>

One of the last easter eggs!

~~~
leeoniya
was about to post this!

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mschuster91
Actually Excel VBA is even more powerful - one can load the DirectX library
and then do "real fast" 3D :D

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Monkeyget
This paradigm of data streaming trough operations instead of a sequence of
instruction operating on data is called dataflow programming :
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataflow_programming>

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nhebb
People have been kind of abusing Excel since at least the mid-90's, using it
for all sorts of things that weren't its primary intended use. I know there
are several sites dedicated to games that run in Excel. Despite the slow
decline of the desktop, the Microsoft Office user base is still in the 100's
of millions, and with that many people you end up seeing some pretty amazing
and funky stuff. I've been selling a text-to-flowchart Excel add-in
(FlowBreeze) for years, so I'm just as guilty as anyone.

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rurabe
I love this. To me it's coming full circle. As someone who felt like they
graduated to programming from Excel, I often get peeved by people who use
Excel like Paint with numbers. How many times have you seen someone doing
calculations by hand and entering them into rows, making pretty spreadsheet
pictures with colored cells, or completely ignoring the most simple functions
like SUM (much less SUMIF).

Now here they have ratcheted up the complexity several degrees... and why? to
paint a picture. Cue the Lion King.

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demian
Spreadsheet is a great model for software.

I hope designers iterate on it more in the future, with better engineered and
more domain-specific products than excel.

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rosstafarian
Anyone remember the demo "Excelence by BraadWorsten Brigade" made in excel
2003 that used double buffering for animation? Really neat.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=H...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HZ6Q224UPkc#)!

<http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=53021>

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asdfs
This is relevant: [http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2013/04/interview-cary-
wa...](http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2013/04/interview-cary-walkin-man-
who-made-rpg.html)

It's a turn-based RPG in Excel.

~~~
walrus
That's actually what reminded me of this article.

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bcRIPster
Pfft... my wife used to write side scrolling shooters with self learning AI
enemies using Clipper on DBase III. You can use anything to write a game if
you put your mind to it.

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deckar01
Instead of using Excel, look into reactive programming.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
I'd argue Excel _is_ a reactive programming environment: just not a
conventional one.

~~~
rocky1138
Relevant: [https://github.com/dmbarbour/Sirea#what-is-reactive-
demand-p...](https://github.com/dmbarbour/Sirea#what-is-reactive-demand-
programming)

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atesti
Would this be possible with Google Docs?

