Getting Excel to interact directly with MySQL is ugly. Querying freezes up Excel because it's single threaded? I don't know how to overcome that problem.

Also I wish there was a spreadsheet software that was more closely connected with something modern like Python. I want to be able to lean on Python to perform calculation while I have a particular spreadsheet open. Maybe even insert Python code into cells. That's difficult to do with Excel. I have experimented with LibreOffice Calc, and it may be possible there.

VBA is okay for writing simple functions & macros. But I don't like using VBA for anything more complicated than that. Maybe I haven't taken enough time to learn it. But at the same time I feel like I'm creating hacks for a language which should already have the features I want. Somewhat related: you'll see people online recommending that you set your objects to Nothing in order for the garbage collection to work. I have no way of knowing if I actually have to do that and I don't like doing things for no reason.