I have to do a thing with Excel files, and I want to keep busy, so I think I'll learn F# and use .NET in that

If you're looking for some pain, I'm pretty sure there are still ActiveX hooks for Excel.

@mhudson Totally are. You can import an Office doodad I'm C# and do everything you could in Excel VBA. It's like you're running C# inside Excel, quite fun. Could make a web server that logs all requests in .xlsx files or other super useful stuff.

In all seriousness tho, it's super useful when you need to write some automation for a company that does their whole business in Excel spreadsheets

Nothing beats VBA with localised syntax (other than english, of course)

They must have gotten access to some really hard stuff, when microsofties 'invented' this concept

@ddephor Well it wasn't really invented it was just adjusted a bit to fit the domain
BASIC -> VB -> VBA

Edit: ah I missed the localised part. Nvm

Why is anyone using excel nowdays?

Check out ClosedXML...

@jmacmi2 Have you ever worked on the business side of a company? There's no substitute for Excel for business people.

@Froot haha yeah sorry, I know it is used heavily on the business side... my organisation has a few excel spreadsheets they're now dependant on to conduct simple business tasks that grew into behemoths.