That is not true, Excel is a great platform for smart non-programming type people to do interesting stuff with numbers. I often find that instead of building a

That is not true, Excel is a great platform for smart non-programming type people to do interesting stuff with numbers. I often find that instead of building a reporting function into some new system, just generating a spreadsheet generator that people can take and mess around with is better for them and less work for me. There's some issues that the stats people don't like, and like all compatibility-preserving 30 year old software, there are ugly bits, but it's got real value to it. I mean maybe use OpenOffice or Google docs or whatever instead if you find Oracle or Google better than Microsoft, but spread sheets are valuable to users.