[n1000]

Can confirm. When I started working in academia, we built very sophisticated Excel models. But every new project would ask form ever more sophisticated sheets and workarounds. Once the calculations took more than a few minutes, I moved on to macros. But at that point I realized that I am using Excel as nothing more than a data container. That finally pushed me to learn Python and I felt never more liberated. Whenever I supervise PhD students now, I push them hard to learn programming early on. I am pretty sure never has any one of them had regret for following my advice. It simply adds a few degrees of freedom to their work.