[stuntkite]

>Excel models can be deceptively inviting of replacement ideas.

In my mind that's actually what is the root at any talk of "Why isn't there an open source alternative for X amazing program?"

As a wiser person than me once said, "It's easy to imagine so I imagine it's easy." Deceptively simple operations in things that have a long legacy of supremacy can just be near impossible to clone even if you can churn out a POC that looks reasonable in 20 minutes. That trap is a big hill a lot of us die on. At one point in my life I swore off ever doing ETL, and now I do it for a living. Seems like that's actually the world now. Sheesh. With MS embracing Python for big data, maybe the next big thing is just what it's always been... Excel.