Very much agreed - and the upper limit is a little more fuzzy, and has more to do with file size, record complexity (how many columns), and what you want to do

Very much agreed - and the upper limit is a little more fuzzy, and has more to do with file size, record complexity (how many columns), and what you want to do with the data. At some point the overall pokeyness of excel when dealing with large datasets overcomes the inertia of "everyone already knows it" and "we'd need a environment to spin up something more complex".