[SciPy-User] peer review of scientific software

[zetah]

Matthew Brett wrote:
>The person who is trying to do work in Excel, that should be done in a
>programming language, needed that training.  They will be doing slower
>work. and make more errors for the lack of a small amount of training.

Thomas Kluyver wrote:
>I think there's a fascinating question as to why people find Excel so much
>easier than a 'real' programming language, even if they create really
>complex spreadsheets.

I find you use term "Excel" too vague.

One way to look at Excel is as visual interface to your data, that you can slice and dice and apply most common tools in least amount of time, even if you are average user.
But Excel data is also available to you in object oriented VBA programming and then also VSTO (.NET Framework) if VBA is too coarse for your sensitive project. So Excel (and good part of Office) expose it's interface and data to both VBA (builtin programming interface) and Visual Studio. It's as real programming as you are up to.

As for Python applicability in scientific software, I find it most useful in environments similar to Matlab/R/IDL. I guess that's the SciPy paradigm after all
I feel that Python can offer new and original possibilities, or adapt to new trends like Mathematica and IPython Notebook, but Excel is just different league