If you're not trolling me and are generally confused, here is where I'm coming from. I think the confusion is that I work for a big corp that do software as a

If you're not trolling me and are generally confused, here is where I'm coming from. I think the confusion is that I work for a big corp that do software as a central part of their business -- I'm not writing applications with shiny buttons on administrative applications (desktop or web) ordered by monkeys in suits. I'm here to write lots of functionality and teach people. For that, we use scripting, open systems that are flexible -- and pluggable. I can always change what I plug in, with the limitation of having to teach people. If it was the best solution, we would e.g. add a Windows machine and script Excel. The main problem would be that stuff in Microsoft applications tend to work badly in the next version and it is a f-ing pain and waste of money to rewrite stuff you implemented well a couple of years ago. (Lots of other people here work as army ants on big projects where they should be replaceable. They use Java or C++, deploying little to Windows. I do server apps, not embeddable here, since I love the speed of creating functionality with Lisp, scripting languages etc.)