Ever since it was released in the 1980s, Microsoft Excel has changed how people organize, analyze, and visualize their data, providing a basis for decision-making for the millions of people who use it each day. It’s also the world’s most widely used programming language. Excel formulas are written by an order of magnitude more users than all the C, C++, C#, Java, and Python programmers in the world combined. Despite its success, considered as a…
Andy Gordon, Dave Maltz, Meredith Ringel Morris and Tony Hoare (retired Microsoft) were named as one of the 95 2020 ACM Fellows for their contributions to computing. Andy is recognized for his contributions to programming languages: their principles, logic, usability, and trustworthiness, Merrie for her to human-computer interaction, information retrieval, computer-supported cooperative work, and accessibility and Tony for his contributions to the theory of programming, and its application to the practice of engineering of software.…
Spreadsheets are the world’s most widely used programming language, by several orders of magnitude. We asked ourselves whether it would be possible to apply programming language research ideas to make spreadsheets a better programming language? If we could, that would empower a huge user community to do more. One of the joys of working at Microsoft Research is the ability to directly influence mainstream software technologies – in this case, Microsoft Excel. And the Excel…
