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Why do people still use VBA?

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Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#361

Post by kbelder »

usrbinbash wrote: post #355
pillefitz wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't give access to a DB, the same way you wouldn't give access to any other external system. Instead you ask what is needed and provide a restricted REST API. You come off as condescending and remind me of why I (ex dev who joined our business department) dislike our IT so much and do my best to encourage shadow IT where I can, while keeping sane best practices around CI/CD, security and testing. I'm so fed up seei…

> Instead you ask what is needed and provide a restricted REST API. Happy to. Problem is, that API has to be built, and tested, and vetted, and maintained, and who's going to do all that work? Because I know a lot of software devs, and none of them lack for tasks.

If it needs to happen, and your team can't do it, somebody else needs to. Your best bet then is to give them the access to do it properly instead of forcing them to hack it together.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#362

Post by enasterosophes »

rprospero wrote: post #132
enasterosophes wrote: post #11

When 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?

> Was IE locked from running, even though the machine was air gapped? Or did you find VBA more convenient that JavaScript?

At least partly it was due to being in an environment where other people I worked with were already using VBA. They suggested VBA for the task, and they were able to help me get up to speed with it fairly quickly. And at that point in time I was still young enough to be open to trying new things just for the sake of it, my own opinions were not fully encrusted yet :)

I did dabble in javascript for a simple webapp for one small project, but that was kind of a tangent to what we usually worked on.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#363

Post by cableshaft »

baz00 wrote: post #91
throwaway154 wrote: post #2

Corps 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…

> 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.

Been at a company that was like this to developers. We couldn't approval to get anything installed, and IT was just plain hostile. They also demanded six months notice for us to get a server that was a copy of an existing computer (we wanted to use it for staging).

I also once built an exe for our internal app in Visual Studio, got a call from IT, they said I had a virus on the computer, requested screen share access, and I watched them navigate to the bin folder and delete the .exe I just built (and just the .exe file).

Had to go through a nice long process to get them to stop doing that. Also they didn't seem to understand that I'm a developer and I develop software for the company.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#364

Post by Modified3019 »

baz00 wrote: post #199
j33zusjuice wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument

It's an extrapolation of that. The golden hammer gives too much credibility to the people weilding the tool.

“Monkey hammer” is definitely very illustrative of a particular kind of chaos, I like it.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#365

Post by theonlybutlet »

Qem wrote: post #348
theonlybutlet wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the interesting thing. I haven't played with it myself but seems MS is trying that with their new Beta python script function, but their implementation is just crazy, completely handicapped. Can't see it being a true replacement for VBA in excel.

I think proper Python macros is one thing LibreOffice could have implemented years ago, to help attract people and break MS near monopoly on spreadsheets. It exists today, but last time I tried felt very hacky. There was no proper macro editor for it, IIRC you had to extract spreadsheets as if they were zip files and save .py written elsewhere in directories inside. Very cumbersome.

Wasn't aware of this, thanks. I'll give it a try. It's at least a good place to try different things with Python.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#366

Post by rainonmoon »

usrbinbash wrote: post #353
dalyons wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real answer is "ok, that is a bad idea for XYZ reasons, what problem are you trying to solve? is there another way we can help you solve for it? Maybe a cheap replica would work for you?" And look, i have nothing to go off but the justifications and choice of words in your replies. But in my experience this attitude of "high priest protecting the gates of production from barbarians(company staff)" is strongly cor…

> The real answer is "ok, that is a bad idea for XYZ reasons, what problem are you trying to solve? That's the answer that I give immediately after the "No." Look, I get what you are saying. I am not trying to keep people away from the capabilities they need to improve how the whole show works. The problem is, what people in my business "guard" are often complex, critical systems, which themselves don't always meet t…

Speaking as someone in offensive security, you and people like you are the reason companies don't get completely ruined when the inevitable happens. Principled IT is often overlooked but the biggest factor in my experience. Thank you for taking your responsibility to your customers seriously. I'm honestly astounded at how many people in this thread resent IT so much, but it certainly makes my engagements easier.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#367

Post by rainonmoon »

jimbokun wrote: post #261
usrbinbash wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Something that seems often forgotten in these discussions is that it's not just putting the entire company in jeopardy, but the customers, clients, and vendors as well. Security seems to be some magical obstructive force to these people because any concerns besides their own convenience are purely abstract. Well, ask anyone who's had their identity stolen from the hundreds of breaches in the last couple of years if that concern is abstract. Staff who can't see past their own desk to understand the role of security are a serious danger to society.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#368

Post by emodendroket »

layer8 wrote: post #173
emodendroket wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I think it's fair to look askance at any environment that includes misfeatures like `On Error Resume Next`.

You mean like most shell scripts? VBA is no different from Bash here.

I wouldn’t consider that much of a defense!

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#369

Post by jampekka »

Qem wrote: post #346
jampekka wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me as practically 100% shadow IT worker (to the point of buying my own devices and internet connections with my own money) is that IT-departments don't care about the users, usability or productivity almost at all (and security people are especially bad at this). And that a lot of IT people frankly don't understand IT very much. Without shadowing it, I couldn't get anything done. I have to install new (o…

> IT forces me to use OneDrive that often simply doesn't work. Also happens to me. OneDrive sucks. It can't even generate proper zip files. Any zip files over 2GB or so I download from it shows as corrupted when I try to extract under linux. IIRC is because OneDrive puts some invalid flags in the files.

Oftentimes the download just is left short. And I recall it not even giving error, just sending a part of the file, which of course is a corrupted archive.

OneDrive sucks and organizational structures that buy OneDrive sucks and the company that produces it really sucks.

Re: Why do people still use VBA?

#370

Post by rchaud »

bertil wrote: post #226
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…

Is it still something you can code with your mouse? I remember having to deal with it on my first job because the team knew nothing about coding. They had “recorded” macros by clicking around and never seeing a line of code. It was incredibly brittle: any change to the table, even adding a comment, would break it, but it allowed them to automate a task.

Macros recording a series of mouse clicks: That's what I did when I was a finance intern many moons ago. Knew nothing about programming at the time.
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