For me, it comes down to the right tool for the job. Excel (strictly speaking, spreadsheets) is very powerful. It is a grid-based visual programing environment that has an interface simple enough to be groked by its original target audience: accountants and file clerks.

What that means to me is that I use excel for "toys" (small data set analysis, rough charts) and ephemeral-yet-shared lists where it is easier to say "evening batch tab, line 3" to communicate which job needs to be updated than try to communicate the same thing in a written request or pull a database table report.

I use R where I need more power: automated reports, automated statistics, and more complex analysis where the paradigm of textual code fits better than the paradigm of a 2D grid. I teach R (or python) when I want to give someone more reproduceable tools than a "magic" spreadsheet that, under the covers, is really a contraption held together with sticky tape and positive thinking.

We can, and should, teach both. Ideally side-by-side with a constant stream of "why are you doing task X this way?" that is largely missing from formal education.