Which is why replacements seldom have more than the most trivial of automation -- the people who are making the move usually change their workflows. The offices that built around Office 95 are, however, still doing things the way they always do.
EDIT: What a changed world when this is a contentious comment.
It may not be the best workflow, but it is the most accessible one for an individual to start with.
Edit: for what it's worth, I agree that it can be a hindrance to a company when it becomes a core operating process. However, that doesn't mean that it is inherently wrong for many needs
But in 2017, it is almost always a very bad sign. Which is why the competition have mostly abandoned automation of the 1990s Office sort.
In 2017 there are shockingly few cases where macro programming an Office document is an ideal solution, and it is usually a really clear sign that you're approaching the problem wrong. It was seldom a good solution even in 2010.
It's funny that in these conversations people always bring up finance. I work in finance, for a wide variety of companies making a wide variety of solutions. Excel automation is a curse. Every Excel automation is an abomination from a decade plus earlier -- islands of data, extraordinarily full of errors, security nightmares, data exposure risks, and on and on.
This is a sample:
That first line is confusing and obsolete. Sun doesn't exist any more, it is two generations of branding from being StarOffice, and good luck figuring out why the service is named after a card game. Even a programmer isn't going to figure all that out without knowing the history of the project.Now in MS Office I'm pretty sure this would be something like ActiveSheet.Cells(1, 5) = "foo". There is nearly no discovery for the LO Basic equivalent 'sheet.getCellByPosition(3,16) = "foo"'.
It really is worlds apart. I don't see how a moderately sophisticated user can learn to write LO macros without finding a reference manual and investing hours orienting themselves. I've seen people teach themselves to a useful standard using MS Office macro recordings.
EDIT More importantly, a novice wouldn't necessarily understand that the recorded macro isn't the accepted way to select a cell. Even realising that a cell can be selected with one line is hindered by the LO macro recording.