If calculations are on automatic, a recalc is fair enough. If calculations on manual, Excel should not initiate an unsolicited full recalc.

Scripting is extremely useful in Excel. In fact the productivity gain of this single feature is just off the chart. You have to think about business users, who barely know how to code. They can automate in a couple of hours some of their tasks, that would otherwise require to discuss with the IT team prioritisation, specs, testings, etc, and get something at best after 6 months.

I appreciate that IT depts hate seeing users coding stuff themselves but there is much to be said about the productivity of IT in large corporations.

And from a user point of view, I don't see why it would be bad practice. The only problem with scripting is viruses. But otherwise every application should be scriptable. There is always something that you would save time with a loop instead of having to do dozens of clicks.