Programming in a spreadsheet is an anti-pattern. Does anyone review your workflow? Write tests for it? Use a real programming language; a notebook at least.

Streamlit apps or similar are doing a great job at this where I'm at.

As simple to build and deploy as Excel, but with the right data types, the right UI, the right access and version control, the right programming language that LLMs understand, the right SW ecosystem and packages, etc.

Are they actually as simply to deploy as Excel? My guess would be that most streamlit apps never make it further than the computer they're written on.

If you have the right tooling (e.g. Streamlit.io) then yes, literally.

To 'deploy' an Excel file I go to Office365 and create my excel file and hit share

To 'deploy' a Streamlit file I go to Streamlit and write my single file python code (can be a one liner) and hit share

maybe the strategy in those cases is to augment the core spreadsheet with tools that can unit test it and broadcast changes etc