Any software that is made to provide a service and does exactly what is supposed to do, as minimalist as possible. The problem with Excel is that allows people that are not developers to build applications, and that leads to all sort of human errors.
excel democratized modeling such that I can use it to run a derivatives book, my cfo can use it to run out financials, my scheduler can use it to understand our OEE, and my wife can use it to plan our annual diwali party with no one having a CS degree but me.
It all goes well until it doesn't. When you develop software you need at least three people to do it right: - The one that designs the application - The developer - The tester After the tester has finished, it goes to the designer for validation, it is a cycle. 1, 2, 3 and repeat, over and over for every single feature. When you develop anything with Excel you are by yourself, nobody tests what you are doing. That is bound to failure. If you do something simple you might get away with it, but people use it for all sort of things because they are allowed to, and that is where the mistake is. If you watch the video I posted the host starts by pointing out huge loses that companies had because they were using Excel. Excel would be fine it is was only a calculator on a sheet, but it isn't. It is a full database with an API that allows people to do all kinds of bells and whistles. And that is where the issue is. You wouldn't give a machine gun to a kid, would you?
Understaffed teams with small budgets in large corporations can have a reasonably bright individual use Excel to model what they need, and easily/quickly teach other team members basic functions without all of the red tape. Product team meetings to pitch a use-case for advanced tools, budget approvals, waiting on support teams to setup secure warehousing, training, all take a lot of time and money...for something you could bootstrap with Excel and Sharepoint.
when my son was a preschooler he often shot dad's mg42 ... he's 50 now moved up to a dshk. so yea i would at least let a kid shoot a machine gun with supervision. texas baby!
you Americans are something to study. If you give a gun to a kid around here you end up in prison immediately.