> Probably the worst example I've seen first-hand was an entire retail banking loan-approval process
There's some real doozies out there. The Reinhart-Rogoff error, which was used to justify imposing austerity on Greece [0]. The UK's COVID tracing fiasco [1]. The list goes on. People using Excel have no business making decisions that affect other people's lives.
There are. But it’s also not an exaggeration to say that entire industries run on Excel, especially the financial sector where it originated.
That’s not changing soon but it’s also worth bearing in mind that spreadsheets were the first killer apps starting way back with VisiCalc, and for good reason. Having worked with old school paper spreadsheets it’s not hard to understand why and with every update I do see these issues being addressed in really useful ways.