This feels like a really dated take to me. Leaving aside whether this was true in the past, in 2023, Excel is happy to open absolutely gargantuan files, and it's quite speedy once it's done so. You can even directly tie it to a database via ODBC if you want, and that works (albeit it obviously flattens the data out in the process, so goodbye foreign keys in any real sense). It also has tons of very easy-to-use data manipulation tools (pivot tables, tables in general, data extrapolation, graphs, etc.) that end up being wonderful complements to something like Python.
Could you write a Python program that would run faster than pure Excel and do the same thing? I mean, probably (although Excel's core execution engine is honestly pretty freaking fast). But could you write it as quickly? Maybe, maybe not. And certainly someone who knows Excel well would have an easier time adding a little Python to patch up any issues than rewriting the whole thing from scratch.
tl;dr I think you're not being accurate about contemporary Excel, and I separately suspect you're not really the target audience here
So, assuming you're still on Office 2010, you're missing (off the top of my head, but I believe these were all Excel 2013 or later):
A2:A300garbage where Excel would instead just have e.g.SomeTable[Heading]. E.g., an actual formula from a sheet I currently maintain to track my team's sprints:=XLOOKUP([@Verified],SprintMeta[Start],SprintMeta[Sprint Name],"Unknown",-1). Python's easier to read here, but this is honestly doing a lot while being surprisingly readable (especially if you're familiar withXLOOKUP, which is basically how you do keyed array access in Excel)You have totally legitimate gripes about Excel; I'm not denying that. But I do think that you might be pleasantly surprised on newer versions.