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Why do people still use VBA?

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Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#31

Post by Valgrim »

owlninja wrote: post #21
_boffin_ wrote: post #5

Because it’s amazing! /s Years ago, I heard that JP Morgan had +20k access databases on their network. The data analysts that make up companies far and wide one day discovered that they hate what they’re doing every day. They investigate the “record macro” button. Some might even find it nifty. They use it again and again. Some may even try to get smart and investigate and get curious of the code that it spat out. So…

Or possibly they went to the IT department who threw down so much red tape from their ivory tower they were forced into the "shadow IT" sector. I've seen in large enterprises where some analysts have the skills to take the Frankenstein they built to the proper level, but are met with "well we need to start a project and make tickets, timelines, requirements, etc..". They certainly have good reasons - supporting somet…

I agree, and I'll add this: these people are not exactly bored, they're just the type of people that see a problem, a solution, and got the time to connect them together. Now I think the best attitude toward that particular type of people is to encourage good practices instead of mocking or shutting it down

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#32

Post by internet101010 »

_boffin_ wrote: post #5

Because it’s amazing! /s Years ago, I heard that JP Morgan had +20k access databases on their network. The data analysts that make up companies far and wide one day discovered that they hate what they’re doing every day. They investigate the “record macro” button. Some might even find it nifty. They use it again and again. Some may even try to get smart and investigate and get curious of the code that it spat out. So…

This is the experience I had as well as a lot of other people that start out in Finance and then move on to something related to data engineering or system implementation.

I don't see it ending anytime soon simply because it is easier to build something somewhat complex inside of Excel and put it on a network share than go through IT to install IDE, build something, and then go through security to deploy it. Not every problem requires a jira project and overly complicated solution.

That said, I am wholeheartedly against large things being built in VBA. A few little scripts to query a cube in one system and combine with data from a table in another based on changing values in a few cells is fine but there is a point where you have to go elsewhere.

Ultimately I am a huge fan of of the Alteryx+Tableau/PowerBI stack for the vast majority of projects, so long as you have the server licenses where things can be automated.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#33

Post by jojobas »

Aloha wrote: post #25

The real answer as pointed out in this document is simple - IT Security and Administrative policy in non-technology companies trends towards restriction and justification rather than permissiveness. I work in a role that develops air gapped custom communications system, my title is engineer - and to that end I have a broad cross domain knowledge - including traditional system administration tasks. I have to go thru s…

Implementing prohibitively tight security and mandating that any files are shared through a product with security footprint of Onedrive is crack-smoking-monkey level of insane.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#35

Post by AndrewDavis »

Arch485 wrote: post #30
Valgrim wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are entire VBA projects really that ubiquitous? As far as I can see, there are really two category of those: first are the huge proprietary plugins from large B2B companies that serve as a way to deeply integrate their products into Excel Spreadsheets, and the second are more like extremely customized tools built by the enthusiastic tinkerer of a non-technical team to make a complex and repetitive task easier. If the…

"There's this one guy who doesn't really know how to program, but he made some software that benefits the company. This software is now so complex the original creator is in way over his head, but continues to work on the software anyways, and it'a a huge mess" is category 3. I've seen it happen multiple times.

This happened to a friend of mine. He had no programming experience but was tech savvy.

The organisation was using an excel spreadsheet for a bunch of things. The org identied his tech savvy-ness and asked him to add some functionality.

He taught himself VB for this task. I still remember the message he sent me happy he'd discovered functions. I asked him how many lines he had written, he was 3000 lines deep by the time he discovered functions.

He knew this was bad. He kept telling management this was too complex for an excel spreadsheet that is emailed around, and they should hire a developer to build proper solution.

He later left the org for greener pastures and on more than one occasion they contacted him to asking to add additional functionality to the spreadsheet. Each time he'd tell them they should hire a developer to write a real application, with a real database and they weren't interested. So he'd quote some stupid hourly rate hoping they'd go away and each time they agreed to it.

Last I heard, his spaghetti spreadsheet still lives on 10 years later.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#36

Post by flomo »

_boffin_ wrote: post #5

Because it’s amazing! /s Years ago, I heard that JP Morgan had +20k access databases on their network. The data analysts that make up companies far and wide one day discovered that they hate what they’re doing every day. They investigate the “record macro” button. Some might even find it nifty. They use it again and again. Some may even try to get smart and investigate and get curious of the code that it spat out. So…

You get it, "record macro" is the key to this. MS could switch them to C# or JS or python or whatever, if they just added a button which did that.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#38

Post by mcbishop »

VBA is a lovely language, that supports object-oriented programming (with composition... no inheritance). It has deep access to and control of Excel. It's mature and stable (Microsoft is no longer significantly changing it). "Real programmers" hate on it largely because of all the amateur spaghetti VBA code written by the business people (that the programmers are occasionally asked to debug).

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#39

Post by jalapenos »

Aloha wrote: post #25

The real answer as pointed out in this document is simple - IT Security and Administrative policy in non-technology companies trends towards restriction and justification rather than permissiveness. I work in a role that develops air gapped custom communications system, my title is engineer - and to that end I have a broad cross domain knowledge - including traditional system administration tasks. I have to go thru s…

Have you considered not working in that role?

And I know that feeling. I had a job once where if you wanted to install a text editor, not only did you need permission, but someone from IT dept had to come to your desk and install it themselves. And this was at an ordinary mid-sized private company manufacturing nothing special.

All you can do is starve these companies of support, by leaving as soon as you discover such attitudes, and encourage any other devs there to do the same.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#40

Post by resoluteteeth »

jodrellblank wrote: post #14
13of40 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows ships with VBScript, JScript, CMD, C#, and PowerShell right out of the box. I recall interviewing a college guy around 2018, and he tried to educate me about how Windows doesn't have a good command line / scripting / automation solution beyond command.com. I think I still said "hire" because he had other talents, but damn.

PowerShell including ISE, with tabs, multi-line cursor, syntax highlighting, autocomplete, step-through debugger, snippets, scriptable/extensible.

PowerShell with ISE is a lot better than the VBA editor in many ways but you're still in the same situation of using a long deprecated ide with an ancient version of a programming language (ISE is deprecated and if you're using the built in version of PowerShell you're stuck on the last legacy framework version from 7 years ago forever and missing a ton of improvements and fixes from newer versions of powershell)
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