And like any tool they can be abused - I really like Excel but I've seen it used for things that were unwise.
I've spent months reverse engineering a vast, complex, costing application that had evolved within a spreadsheet and needed (for very good reasons) to be turned into a proper application. The really entertaining part was trying to convince people that their spreadsheet didn't actually do what they thought it did....
Edit: It was costing a complex heavy industrial process so it had logic that was basically physics right through to finance.
I think the solution should be to have better excel reverse engineering tools. I have seen plenty of crazy complex spreadsheets that had hit a wall and were hard to refactor but the solution would never have happened if they hadn’t had excel enabling regular users to create it.
I've spent months reverse engineering a vast, complex, costing application that had evolved within a spreadsheet and needed (for very good reasons) to be turned into a proper application. The really entertaining part was trying to convince people that their spreadsheet didn't actually do what they thought it did....
Edit: It was costing a complex heavy industrial process so it had logic that was basically physics right through to finance.