Why do people still use VBA?

That's exactly the problem.

Here is a personal anecdote.

Our customer wanted us to setup a development/test machine. Because the software had some real-time constraints, we had to use a CPU with enough physical cores and a customized Linux distribution, accessible through SSH with a remote desktop, it didn't need direct access to neither our corporate network nor the customer network. Essentially, what we needed was a computer with an internet connection and root access for at least one member of the team.

So we setup to talk with the customer to decide on the various requirements. We forwarded them to our an IT security department, and they essentially replied with "this is not a standard configuration, do it yourself". I ended up making the plan myself, had it checked with some guy at the IT security that happened to be cooperative and after a few back-and-forth on some details to make sure it was fine, I started to set up the server. At the same time, my manager made sure we had a spot to put the computer in the server room, all good. We essentially did it all by ourselves, and the customer was ok, I wouldn't say "happy" because all these exchanges with IT security took way too much time. All that was needed was for the IT guy to plug in the machine and configure the network.

Then it went downhill. They first stated that they couldn't let us have our own computers in the server room, only VMs. It was not only completely inadequate due to the real-time requirements, but the price was absurdly high, like hundreds of euros a month. Plus, it is not what they told us earlier.

So, we insisted. They then sent us someone who was probably an architect of some kind and started to suggest some ridiculously complex architectures with a dedicated router, firewalls, etc... when all we really needed was an internet connection with no special privileges (something the customer has already agreed with). Not only it would have cost thousands just for the study, and who knows how much for the actual setup and maintenance, but it came with annoying restrictions.

In the end, we told the customer we couldn't do it, so they did it themselves and we did the dev and tests we had to do on the customer machine. Needless to say, the customer didn't really appreciate the whole affair, and we got dumped.

What we probably should have done, and I have seen it many times is to get a regular consumer-grade DSL/fiber plan just to work around the IT department.

By "stateless", I'm assuming you mean functional programming paradigms of immutable, idpotent, and no side effects.

FWIW, for build pipelines, my quarter-baked notion is to use ZFS snapshots (or equiv).

I'll check out Pluto for Julia.

As you know, state is a challenge for "serverless" too.

I've been reacquainting w/ RDBMS tools. There are a few new strategies (implementions) for change tracking. Back in the day, we just banged the rocks together (ook, ook), so I'm very eager to learn the new hotness.

Good article.

What it doesn't mention is the versatility and value the combination of VBA and the various MS Office applications brings to the table for small and medium businesses.

Translation: VBA, as a tools for SMB's, can make them money.

VBA is often discusses in terms of Excel. However, it is available --and very useful-- across the entire MS Office suite.

Over the years we have used VBA for applications ranging from engineering to business. From automated code generation (generate Verilog FPGA code based on easy-to-maintain data entered into Excel) to financial analysis and projections (example, Bass Diffusion Model product evaluation).

One of the most fun applications I remember was using VBA to create a training application for dealers and customers using PowerPoint. We created a full simulation of this device (control panel with buttons and an LCD display), using VBA to run the show. This was super easy to distribute to our dealers, required no installation and everyone could run it. Of course, today it would make more sense to build such a thing as a web app.

Still, VBA makes such things accessible to lots of people. You can use it with Excel, Word, Access, PowerPoint, etc. As a tool, it is useful and convenient. Most people could not care less about the, often pedantic, opinion us engineering types can have about such things.

As a software engineer I wish something like Python was a first-class citizen across the MS Office suite. I know they are slowly making this happen. I haven't looked into it for a while. It seems MS wants you to have a subscription to Office 360, which is a nonstarter as far as I am concerned. I could be wrong.