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Why do people still use VBA?

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Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#261

Post by jimbokun »

usrbinbash wrote: post #170
menotyou wrote: post #109

Let'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…

I can find bad examples of how things work in basically every department I chose if I look long enough. Are there IT-Managed things that border on insanity? Oh yes. Are these a good excuse to build a shadow IT? No, they are not. Don't get me wrong: I'm not bothered at all when a couple analysts get together and hack away at their own little tools in VBA. Kudos to them for getting into the spirit of things, and maybe…

Security is the non-negotiable.

If they want to play with whatever tech tools to get their job done, have at it. They can ask for help when they really need it.

But if they are taking short cuts with the security of the data, that needs to be cracked down on immediately, as they are putting the entire company in jeopardy.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#262

Post by Pxtl »

qsdf38100 wrote: post #112
Pxtl wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vb6 at least had "on error goto".

Vba has "on error goto".

googles

Huh. I distinctly remember working with VBA-based systems like 20 years ago where that was a massive difference - like, I'd been writing code on mid-'90s VB4 and it had "on error goto" but VBA didn't like 10 years later. But maybe it was specific to one or two VBA-based platforms.

Either way, it was super infuriating since it meant the only non-catastrophic error-handling possible was "on error goto next" and then manually checking error codes.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#263

Post by ethbr1 »

bee_rider wrote: post #238
ethbr1 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We decided that the water/electricity utility doesn't get to control how you use the amount you consume. Modern IT is more like if your water utility had final say over which faucet you installed and how you used it.

If you started using water in, like, industrial or agricultural quantities I guess the town would eventually get curious what is going on.

Well, you'd still be paying for it.

Authorizing use would be akin to the pre-Carterphone ATT model where only pre-approved uses would be allowed ('you can't attach your equipment to our network').

Thankfully, we eventually realized that was a dumb decision and moved to something closer to user freedom + network protects itself + zero trust.

Better to just guide behavior at the pricing level, and let people make their own decisions about use.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#264

Post by Traubenfuchs »

Johnny555 wrote: post #7

Apparently it's so ubiquitous that you don't even need to say what it is, every just knows. I looked it up -- VBA=Visual Basic for Applications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_for_Applications

I'd argue that developers beyond a certain age are as guaranteed to have come into contact with VBA as with HTML/JS.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#265

Post by jimbokun »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #205
7thaccount wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shadow IT exists for a reason and that's the dysfunctional bureaucracy of IT. The "Circle of IT" is real. Small companies start out nimble, but then stuff gets crazy and someone decides to standardize it all under one department. This works for awhile, but eventually this organization becomes so useless that it can't serve any functions of the business anymore, so a shadow IT group is built that the business SMEs lov…

The "bureaucracy of IT" is driven by legal, compliance, and security reasons. The reason why small companies are "nimble" is they are flying by the seat of their pants and one investigation/ransomware/insider threat away from ruin. Not saying that isn't normal (been there, done that... thanks FINRA), but that's the reason.

Yep.

The core data should sit behind some kind of service that enforces legal, compliance, and security policies.

Then tools that access the data in a compliant way should be given a lot of flexibility for what tech stacks they use to process the data.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#266

Post by 4star3star »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #204
menotyou wrote: post #109

Let'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…

Someone needs to build a wasm interpreter in VBA. Then we can write programs in Go/Rust/etc and run them in office or wherever. VBA is to corporate environments what JavaScript is to the web.

VBA can call executables, but I can see some places locking things down such that that would not fly.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#267

Post by 4star3star »

larodi wrote: post #251

I find myself thinking about Excel, and spreadsheets (electronic tables) as a whole, and the fact than only few people outside of it actually understand how oldies got it really well with reactive-functional programming in the spreadsheet language. It is what React/Angular is struggling to get right with more than dozen releases so far. Also so many people fail to understand why the spreadsheet is so convenient to en…

So much of the effort put into web development is in presentation. You're right - if you just need the data, it's hard to improve on the spreadsheet.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#268

Post by cm2187 »

layer8 wrote: post #184

– It’s built in. – The IDE is built in. – The syntax is beginner-friendly. – It’s stable and doesn’t change every six month. – It’s well-documented. – No build steps, it just runs, and fast. – It’s resource-efficient (CPU, RAM). – You can easily create dialogs and forms using the built-in visual GUI builder. – You can break into the built-in debugger from your Office document. – If you want to get fancy, it has inter…

But unfortunately microsoft didn’t invest into VBA in 20 years, other than keeping the light on. And it lacks so many modern features.

There was an attempt at a .net version of VBA (would have worked the same way, with a mini visual studio embedded in Office), called VSTA. But it was killed. So the cattle (business users) is stuck with 1990s technology.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#269

Post by jampekka »

specialist wrote: post #256
j-a-a-p wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering what would be replacing Excel/VBA after 3 decades as a citizen developer alternative. I could not think of something that even comes close. Any ideas?

I'm very optimistic about Project Jupyter style notebooks. I believe, without any evidence, that they have much greater potential thoughout IT, devops, whatever. Example: Imagine a CI/CD pipelines using notebooks. I hate Jenkins/Hudson style build systems so much I could just spit. I just want to run a shell script. (Alas, I haven't had the gumption to try this idea out yet. Soon.)

Jupyter style notebooks are already becoming the next VBA in some fields. And this is not a good thing.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#270

Post by jimbokun »

larodi wrote: post #251

I find myself thinking about Excel, and spreadsheets (electronic tables) as a whole, and the fact than only few people outside of it actually understand how oldies got it really well with reactive-functional programming in the spreadsheet language. It is what React/Angular is struggling to get right with more than dozen releases so far. Also so many people fail to understand why the spreadsheet is so convenient to en…

Excel is arguably the best end user IDE ever invented.
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