[deepmacro]

I think having to use a tool different than excel is hard because people have been used to that type of UI for 40 years.

The problem I have is that once you go beyond a simple thing it becomes messy and you never know what you are dealing with. The way you present things graphically and they way you organize data to perform computations are tangled, making hard to read IMO.

[max51]

no, the real reason is the super wide range of things you can do in 3 clicks that other solution would require you to download external libraries and plugins and/or spend hours implementing it. People can be productive immediately and they never have to learn how to code or waste time configuring the interface and finding third party add-ons.

Simple stuff that you do everyday like sorting data and removing duplicates is probably not difficult to implement by an experienced programmer (eg. in python), but excel has it ready for you and it's a 2 click operation that a complete beginner can figure out on their own with no training, no coding skills and no documentation.

It's the same with Matlab, engineers don't pay for access to the m language, they pay for the toolboxes and the thousands of small QoL details in the UI like importing your data with a quick Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V.