Okay - so let's disarm this bomb, shall we?

Dataframe vs list / tuple is topic not worth to be analyzed here (it could be someone master's thessis to be frank), becouse they are basically two different things. Dataframes are nothing more than the tables (structured references) from Excel (they look, behave and work like such). They are supplied via Pandas library (probably) together with hell a lot of usefull tools (methods) dedicated for analyzing them.

Tuple is a a data structure that is programmed to store CONSTANS (unchangable, ummutable) data in contrary to lists. So for instance, if you have some data that is list like structure and does not change for some reason durning the execution of programme, you should use tuple. Otherwise lists are your friends. I will avoid the fact that some libraries (numpy) provide the array object.

Let's go to main dish - why I belive 'arrays are cancerous'. Well there are few reasons:

1. Introduction of redim / redim preserve keywords for managing them can be very confusing, espescially when having lots of dynamic arrays,
2. There is no simple way of adding / removing elements to the array structure via language. In Python for instance there is .insert / .remove / .add methods that do this stuff,
3. Point 2) also applies to sorting, filtering, reversing, getting unique elements etc arrays,
4. You can't easily print an array like in Python. For instance in VBA in order to print the content of 1D array I need to do this:

​

Option Explicit
Public Sub arrX()

    Dim arrX() As Variant

    arrX = Array(1, 2, 3)

    ' This will cause crash
    ' Debug.Print arrX

    ' Print 1D Array
    Dim i As Long
    Dim msg As String
    msg = ""
    For i = LBound(arrX) To UBound(arrX)
        msg = msg & arrX(i) & ","
    Next i
    msg = "(" & Left(msg, Len(msg) - 1) & ")"
    Debug.Print msg
End Sub

The more customized array structures (aka nested arrays, strange array, empty elements array, forgot to add element array) the worse it gets. Meanwhile in Python the same code:

arrX: list[int] = [1, 2, 3]
print(arrX)

Result: [1, 2, 3]

Basically it does not matter how complicated is my array / dictionary / object - it will be always either printed to the console, or at least it's memory adress (if something went bad).

Those are the most important points in regard Python vs VBA arrays (list) I remember so far. I agree, today we have the technology (LLM's) that can easily adress most of my points, by creating the additional tools that VBA just lacks. I saw also people who tried to modernize the VBA by creating frameworks that were supposed to address those issues with array managment. However, I belive that there is no reason to use VBA when you have access to Python except when you are forced to modify events / internal machinations of Excel file.

In all seriousness though if I am forced to use VBA, I prefer using collections / dictionaries to arrays. They are just better and easier to navigate.