I have worked in both a bioinformatics lab at University and a medical devices company. At both places, I have seen excel used for a HUGE amount of tasks by biologists, business people, software testers (from non-programming backgrounds) and programmers. It was used as a tool, along with perl, php, c/c++... depending on the level of complexity. Its just damn useful and everyone knows how to use it.
I like Excel for what it is supposed to be used for, and it remains the only MS product I use cause it does its job well. But it has limits, which are all too frequently abused.
Very interesting. I wonder what open source solutions there are that could supplant the use of excel by non-programmers (and programmers) in such a variety of fields. Something slightly less opinionated and slightly more malleable.. and just as simple to use. If there isn't something, there probably should be. I think GUI is a must if its going to overtake excel.
