I completely agree. A few years ago a large bank banned spread sheet based quant models from their desk. There are certainly draw-backs, I wouldn't want to give

I completely agree. A few years ago a large bank banned spread sheet based quant models from their desk. There are certainly draw-backs, I wouldn't want to give my programming languages for spread-sheets, as they exist now. However, I think programmers often forget that there are lots of good ideas in Excel as well.