Excel, to me, is the poster-example of a sad development: It has become less of a tool for work – the work IS Excel (and the other Office components, too). Instead of doing work with Excel, most office drones operate Excel – and hopefully finish some work task regardless.
That's quite the opposite what the computer SHOULD be.
In part, this development is caused by Microsoft, whose main interest always were sales and install numbers, and not WHAT the tool is used for – as long as the tool came from Microsoft, they're happy. They added functions primarily to prevent people wanting to try something else. It's sad how much innovation was stifled by this misguided business approach.
Excel certainly is a powerful tool, but for most of what is done with it, there are better and more productive tools out there. But since those better tools only ever do part of what's done with Excel, so they never get widespread use.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
