My local data mart runs on MS SQL Server, and I want to pull data directly into R or Python for data analysis. This is **really** easy on Windows with its' built-in ODBC manager, but I spent a weekend figuring out how to do this after switching to OSX. A lot of documentation out there is old (from 2012), so I decided to make this for anyone still looking for an answer in 2019.
Excel is still the lingua franca of Corporate Finance and is blazing fast for quick, ad-hoc analyses. I learned early on to use excel without a mouse, and with the Quick Access Toolbar and some macros, you can even make Excel feel like a video game!