@darius Making the computer do stuff is good, but a spreadsheet really isn't a very good tool for general jobs.
I think it's an indictment of the whole industry that every computer doesn't ship with a powerful, general system which is simple for an average user to understand and use.
IT takes a shitload of creativity to build stuff in Excel. Imagine if that got applied more directly to the problem, instead of how to express it in Excel.