Most financial firms need their quants to worry less about the new programming language hotness, and more about moving entire systems off unbelievably complicated Excel spreadsheets.
The reason for this is simple. Excel is
1. An incredibly powerful tool.
2. No bar of entry (cost aside, true in corporate environment).
3. Very gradual learning curve.
4. The efficiency gain vs time invested is exponential.
Power Excel users, much like their VIM/Emacs counter parts don't use a mouse. It is just keyboard short cuts [1][2]. This makes them insanely productive.
Is there any open source framework that has an excel-like GUI and good integration with standard coding tools?
- Resolver One ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolver_One )
- Project Dirigible ( https://github.com/pythonanywhere/dirigible-spreadsheet )