I was encouraged to use Excel/VBA by our official Auditors and Advisors at a Fortune 500 public company. The rationalization was (whatever you might make of this):
- Excel is generally "contained" without too many external dependencies (not really true, but truer than others...)
- Excel is easily auditable (true for excel formulas, less so for VBA, but sure, better than Perl etc)
- Excel is easily versioned and frozen (some truth to this)
Obviously none of these answers are universally correct, but there was some truth to this. And Auditors/Advisors are generally more concerned about risk mitigation than other goals.
- Excel is generally "contained" without too many external dependencies (not really true, but truer than others...)
- Excel is easily auditable (true for excel formulas, less so for VBA, but sure, better than Perl etc)
- Excel is easily versioned and frozen (some truth to this)
Obviously none of these answers are universally correct, but there was some truth to this. And Auditors/Advisors are generally more concerned about risk mitigation than other goals.