[throwawaymsft]

> Programming is not just hammering away in [language], it's deconstructing a problem into smaller, less complicated problems, to generify and abstract away common properties to allow for repetition in similar contexts.

This is exactly what you learn in Excel. How to take some data, transform it slowly (column by column), check your work, save intermediate results, etc.

In minutes you can go from your idea to some crude version of it. Then you refine it.

Look, Excel is like LogoWriter. We're not asking people to design rockets with it. But it's a hell of a lot better than sitting them in front of a terminal and asking them to learn about variables, loops, print statements, etc. Excel is type and go.