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How can you argue Excel's implicit typing is an advantage. Names turn to dates, strings to numbers, and all sorts of other unexpected nightmares.

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For trained programmers it might be more harm than help, but, for many laypeople, it absolutely is an advantage because it means Excel is automatically allowing them to handle date-like text as actual dates. Most of the time that's helpful.

Unless you are a biologist. Excel is infamous for mangling names of genes and thinking they are dates. In fact some genes had to be renamed because it was considered easier to do that than get Microsoft to fix the problem (or you know, just not use Excel, which many non-programmer types, including many bench biologists, use as a general data holder, akin to an adhoc database)

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...

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