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I think of spreadsheets as like q-tips. Apparently the one thing that the manufacturers of q-tips tell you not to do is to stick them in your orifices. Yet the number one actual use of q-tips is people cleaning gunk from their ears.

People build the most insane, unmaintainable, insecure messes using spreadsheets - because they can.

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But they can also build a lot of really useful things too, and many do, and create a ton of value.

The same can be said for any programming language/tool. Reminds me of this quote attributed to Doug Gwyn:

"Unix was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things."

And you can FAST. What else is there for quick and dirty stuff????

Emacs

I like to use org-tables for my spreadsheets:-D

I'm joking... mostly. That said, I really have used elisp functions on an org-tbl in anger before.

There is also ses-mode (Simple Emacs Spreadsheet) that started shipping with Emacs since version 22.

iPython or Jupyter Notebooks, where you can whip up R, Julia, or other code in your browser, interspersed with markdown, charts and formulas.

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