system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why and how is Microsoft Excel so versatile and powerful? How is it that spreadsheet software can be used as a crude game engine?
gpt
It does a lot of the basic things you'd want from a regular programming language. Basically, take data from one or more locations (cells), apply math or logic to them, and output a result elsewhere. It handles a lot of details that programmers would otherwise need to worry about, like where values are stored in the computer's memory. It can provide graphical output functions like coloring cells based on what's stored there without the programmer seeing much more complexity than using it for regular math. And Excel can do fairly complex math and logic functions without the programmer needing to worry about *exactly* how many steps are involved, or setting memory or variables for use during the process.

So... it's versatile. People may argue about how "powerful" it is, it's not hugely efficient with computer resources or fast when doing complex tasks.