Spreadsheets are useful for data exploration. Can you do data exploration with other tools? Sure you can, but spreadsheets make exploring data intuitive and there's value to be had from that. I'd suggest it's not a good idea to get too hung up on any one tool, most of the time people just want to use the one that gets the job done with a minimum of fuss. Sometimes that'll be a script, sometimes not. Sometimes that'll be a spreadsheet, sometimes not.