A friend of mine works converting spreadsheets to Python/Java programs. Basically people at the company solve the problem with Excel, and when that gets to slow, he codes it up to read from a CSV and they're off to the races.

It's amazing how far these business types can get before needing a programmer to optimize things. As a programmer, I tend to think in terms of logic, and then I tried to build a complicated budget tool in Python and the turnaround was just atrocious. So, I did it in a spreadsheet instead and was far more productive.

Spreadsheets are awesome, and whoever came up with the concept should get some kind of award. I can't think of a single software tool that has enabled more productivity than a spreadsheet.