Actually, I agree with you for the purpose of ordinary Excel formulae. It's only because I do so much with VBA that I use R1C1 most of the time; for programming, it's much easier to think in.

It does have one other advantage. When we're talking about formulae on this forum, A1 notation requires one to explain the context when using relative references. That is, if I say the formula should be =SUM(C$2:C45), I have to explain as an aside that this is correct only when entered in C46. But in R1C1 I can just say =SUM(R2C:R[-1]C) and the location doesn't matter.

But, alas!, most people don't know R1C1 so it wouldn't be helpful to use it no matter how much clearer it is.