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I think Python and Julia are popular for this purpose, Python much more so.

You will probably want to use one of the “notebook” environments that make your Python easier to use interactively and display graphs and the like. Jupiter is the one I know but there are others too.

R is another area worth looking at.

In terms of popularity I'd say Python>R>Julia R might be closest in syntax to how excel works, especially with the ifelse functions. R also has dplyr, which is unmatched in how it makes data manipulation easy and streamlined

What about PowerBI stuff, lambda and M language?

I would also be that guy and recommend SQL.

PowerBI also has the ability to do some custom R widgets I think, although I’ve never played with that in particular.