Before Python, before Perl, before I grew up and got a real job, I worked in a lab that relied upon the Ingres spreadsheet application to reduce experimental da

Before Python, before Perl, before I grew up and got a real job, I worked in a lab that relied upon the Ingres spreadsheet application to reduce experimental data. At the time, it was a Macintosh-only application, and its scripting support was actually very good, but validating the dsta was a very slow process and ran overnight. I re-wrote the process in AWK, and was able to complete the data-reduction task in about 60 seconds on a DEC 5000 workstation. But my numbers did not match the spreadsheet results, and finding out why was an interesting process. I then encountered small, remote offices of big international firms -- usually real-estate, insurance companies -- that had limited local IT support. It was Excel macros all the way down. And then a large biotech firm, where it took KPMG analysts a few months to determine that our entire business relied upon this one guy's spreadsheet. So yeah. But: Excel dies, let us suppose... What will these people come up with? Alexa queries? I have preferences other than Python, but mostly I csn read code written by the scientists who wrote them. They may be abominations, like global state variables and magic numbers, but they are readable. Is Python any reason to hope for a better world? (Hmm. Off-topic, perhaps. Your story woke some memories of tough IT experiences.)