
Microsoft Office rewrite to React.js nears completion - velmu
https://react-etc.net/entry/microsoft-office-rewrite-to-react-js-nears-completion
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retrac98
I'll reserve judgement on office until I see it running, but this trend
towards moving everything to web tech is a little worrying. So many of my
"desktop" apps feel slow and bloated now, and I keep seeing instances of
decent software being rewritten in JS. :(

I don't want my spreadsheets crapping out on me at a few thousand rows.

~~~
mseidl
Even though I never use outlook/ms stuff.

I like google google docs. The thing is, I rarely have to use them, so and
it's been FOREVER since I've anything like libreoffice installed. So, in the
case I have to handle a word document or spreadsheet, docs is good. I'd rather
deal with a slightly slower web app rarely then having all the office suite
stuff installed.

~~~
prepend
I was a big fan of google docs 10 years ago. But have lost interest as they
have stagnated. Sheets is slow for anything over 100 rows compared to Excel
and there’s a lot of 20% functionality that’s been missing for years in
functions, charts, pivot, etc.

It’s great for lists, but I want an Excel clone on web. Fortunately, MS has
been building this.

If MS ever simplified their license, I’ll switch.

~~~
Jakob
What’s the complex part about their licensing? I thought it was a monthly
subscription if you want upgrades or a one-time fee if you want the current
version only.

~~~
prepend
They have commercial and non-commercial. Different features are active in
different configurations.

The actual license is simple for office. I actually pay $100/year for my
family. But almost every few months a new feature is announced only to learn
that it’s only available for business. Or it’s not available for personal
users. Stuff like that.

Google is dead simple. Everything free for personal use, but more storage
space. Or business is $50/user/year/forever.

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oldcynic
Going on this [0] comment, desktop Office is remaining in C & C++, and on this
[1] Code is Typescript and has no plans to move from Electron.

So I'm really not sure what to make of this random viral tweet.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17305332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17305332),
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17306589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17306589)

~~~
akavel
Even more details here, apparently (and by the same author as the original
tweet):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17304128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17304128)

original reddit post:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8qqhlz/office_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8qqhlz/office_365_ms_teams_skype_code_and_the_edge_debug/e0ll1dt/)

Though it still doesn't make things much clearer to me, unfortunately, other
than the general idea of: "Yeah, but no"...

~~~
seba_dos1
Just read the whole twitter thread. The author of the original tweet makes so
many semantic mistakes and ambiguities, it really could mean anything. Also,
other Microsoft employees are constantly debunking most of common
interpretations. There's little point in making news stories out of it, it's
just a low quality gossip initiated by an overly excited employee.

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PhilWright
Do they mean that just the user interface is being rewritten in
React/JavaScript or do they mean the entire application?

It is hard to believe that several million lines of Excel C/C++ code is being
rewritten into JavaScript. It must be possible, but the cost and time to
rewrite so much heavily optimized code seems prohibitive. And surely will run
much slower than the existing Win32 version.

~~~
yulaow
only the frontend, there is a post on reddit in which one of the devs
specifically said that all the backend is still in c++ and will remain that
way

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sus_007
Already discussed earlier :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17303745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17303745)

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towndrunk
Microsoft has a pretty nice component library as well called Fabric.
[https://developer.microsoft.com/en-
us/fabric](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric)

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jackpeterfletch
Should probably correct the title to "Office 365 rewrite..."

I've already had two hardcore js nuts come to me separately and exclaim that
office is being rewritten in js, and have had to explain that O365s front-end,
which is obviously already in some form of js, is being rewritten in React.

Has nothing to do with Office Desktop and the 365s backend services.

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na85
>and a version for WIN32 APIs is built using the Electron framework.

Good grief. As if native Office wasn't bloated already.

~~~
mateuszf
They're quite good at optimising Electron apps though as demonstrated by
Visual Studio Code.

~~~
akerro
> optimising Electron apps though as demonstrated by Visual Studio Code.

Go ahead and open 6mb CSV file. Keep me updated :)

~~~
hungerstrike
I downloaded a 50 MB CSV file full of russian tweets from NBC [1] in response
to your challenge and VSCode opened it nearly instantly (~2 seconds) on my
self-built Windows 10 PC with an i5-4690 CPU @ 3.50 GHz with 2 other instances
of VSCode already running.

Total memory usage for VSCode processes was 1.5 GB. The other 2 instances of
VSCode were debugging a Node.js Express app and editing a rather large
React/Redux app.

When VSCode had no other running instances, opening the same file took about
.5 seconds longer.

[1] [https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/now-available-
more...](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/now-available-
more-200-000-deleted-russian-troll-tweets-n844731?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma)

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sotojuan
React is pretty crazy. It seems like it's taking over in a way Angular and
others never did.

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giancarlostoro
Well this shows that even if Facebook ditches React, at least Microsoft will
have a heavily vested interest in maintaining React. I wonder if they used
ReactXP or not.

Edit:

My only disappointment is no direct mention of Linux. I would be fine with the
Linux variant being Electron based, but I need this thing to run on Linux too!

~~~
jrs95
It's still largely C++ based on the backend, I doubt they're going to add an
entirely new compile target just to support a tiny minority of Linux desktop
users. Especially since it would just be the Electron app anyways, which
probably isn't a huge improvement over the web version you can already use on
Linux.

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nunez
I can’t wait for this. A (hopefully) significantly lighter-weight and cross-
platform Office installation that supports VBA and shares DNA with its web and
mobile offerings?

Sign me up!

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wpdev_63
Strange, one would think they would move everything to .net core as it would
be a perfect fit for it.

