Upon reading answers, I wonder how much, if any, market is there for VBA only (self bootstrapped?) tools that bring modern development practices into it (version control, testing)
Why do people still use VBA?
151–160 of 421 posts
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#152small trivia: long ago I had to massage a db dump made into excel files, so I hacked up a DSL to write business rules validation / transformation, all in VBA (where I also learned that the object model included some cute transparent delegation subtype thing). C-suite decided we needed more speed, so they brought up two seasoned engineers, one of them all about .NET interop. But doing Office logic outside of VBA/Office brings a lot of pain (excel embeds type in formatting IIRC) so he ended up recreating a mini excel object, still hit performance issues and ejected himself from the project. tl;dr I was surprised how "pragmatic" it ended up.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
VBA is the ultimate agile programming language. The company's IT aka Bureaucracy Department is stuck with Scrum, Squads and what not. And meanwhile in the other departments people are just getting things done with Excel/VBA. Nothing has changed. In the last century this also happened and it was called islands of automation. In my bubble back then it was considered a good strategy, let departments first play around, a…
> In my bubble back then it was considered a good strategy, let departments first play around, and if they are on to something integrate it. Funny how with computerized process, IT departments are effectively central planners . The lowly workers get to only do what the IT secretariat allows. It is this way because national^Wcorporate security!
It's not so much central planners deciding who can have what, but rather a natural monopoly. You don't want your water/electricity depend on a family-run shop that can just shut down, and neither you want your purchasing department to hinge on that guy from logistics who can just quit, leaving behind his magic incomprehensible spreadsheets.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect that dystopian environments of locked-down mandatory corporate Windows laptops with no software installation privileges, firewalled networking and even the USB ports disabled are also part of the reason for every function being crammed into the browser to the point that the browser has become an operating system host... Creativity (and catastrophes) happens where there is freedom: local scripting and browse…
Yes. At this point it's well-known that ports 80 and 443 are the two ports no company[0] can afford to block. This means, among other things, that making your product as a webapp is by far the best approach if you want to "worm your way into" corporate environments, as any worker can use it out of the box, while anything else would require IT approval. -- [0] - Except those creating high-security environments with ai…
Proxies can be pretty harsh too. Not sure if we have a whitelist or a blacklist but it’s pretty restrictive.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#155Let's face it: IT is the bureaucracy department of modern times which can keep itself 95% busy with self inflicted problems and has 5% service orientation. Processes are opaque for outsiders and typically not helpful. I really had to lough when I read the following description of the IBM BPM but this sums up a good part of the issue: "...while IBM BPM does come with a REST API, this REST API is borderline useless to…
There's a sentence in the article which says that this is an explicit policy decision of the company. > It is supposedly “Against the technology strategic vision of the company” to allow “end-users” access to high level programming languages.
And rightly so.
Imagine for a moment that someone in accounting built a system in lisp to automate part of his job. As time goes on, he takes on more responsibility, which he writes more lisp for.
One day, he gets hit by a bus.
The lisp program he wrote is now an integral part of the running of the accounting department simply by accumulation and momentum, with tons of business logic baked in. Where do you look to find a replacement?
With VBA, there's a much higher chance of an accountant being familiar with the language, and a much smaller surface area for what they can do.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#156Corps have a dev environment sitting right in Excel that doesn't need special (management, management's management, adding to a registrar of projects, budgeting or project manager assigned, etc) approval for non-stock software. The stack's Excel, plus Sharepoint if you're really looking for a networked data store that also has a web interface. From that end-user direction, solutions emerge. And they're in VBA.
Worth also pointing out that sometimes when you're in a corporate dystopian hell hole do not expect to be able to actually request or install software on your device. What is there is what you have and trying to get it changed is an exercise in taking on the bureaucracy. It's not worth it. Many people have tried and failed. Back in the dark ages, we had a horrible reporting engine in Word VBA that pulled report defin…
What you call monkey hammer is actually the “golden hammer,” or “law of the instrument.” Idk if that matters to you, but it’s an already defined thing.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#157Why? the obvious answer is that businesses still make heavy use of Office apps like Excel, and VBA allows for extending/customizing files-as-micro-applications.
Important to note that office apps and Macro-tools were essential before the Web and Mobile apps became popular. Businesses have to carefully balance between Adopting the Newest tech/fad and Growing their business, and Staffing/skills.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#158I always find these discussions fascinating because, despite being a developer for like 25 years, I have absolutely no idea what you guys are talking about. I know that somehow business is all run on xls, but practically it’s hard to understand what that means. Something something Salesforce
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a few colleagues that told me they have a job like that. Not done in 15 minutes but 2 hours, then they goof off for the next 6 hours. There are two reasons: 1. They have a specific job with a specific set of duties (think sysadmins, or administrative duties) in a large company or in a state beurocracy. 2. They would rather go home or do something more but they are not permitted: they have metered time in the o…
> they seem to be fine with it, or rather, have accepted it. i mean, i would imagine some people want to see purpose in their jobs, while others are just treating it as a job and whatever happens with the output of the job is of no consequence. And this is esp. true of gov't jobs, but by no means do the gov't have a monopoly on such inefficiencies. But my opinion is that there's something systemic that is preventing…
Indeed, but there seems to be no incentive to do it. In government jobs nobody cares. In large companies nobody cares either, these are just operating costs. That is, until money is short, but then they either cut whole departments or sites.
The problem is actually in the work culture, where other coworkers would prevent another worker from becoming too efficient and proactive. So, nothing changes.
Re: Why do people still use VBA?
#160When I worked for an alphabet agency, I had to develop apps for people deployed to Afghanistan. The only computers they had access to were running locked down Windows XP with no way to install anything new. They were stuck with Office because it was already vetted and installed. Therefore I was stuck with Office too, even though I'm a Linux guy. I got a fair amount of kudos building some real frankensteins for them p…
Having been in a similar, but not the same, situation, I resorted to an HTML file with some JavaScript code in a script tag. Was IE locked from running, even though the machine was air gapped? Or did you find VBA more convenient that JavaScript?
I've done this too. with modern browsers you can do a lot with JS and HTML5 without much of a backend.