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Will VBA Die? (2019)

thespreadsheetguru.com

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Re: Will VBA Die? (2019)

#81

Post by Ididntdothis »

bilekas wrote: post #72
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure, but that person may have been attempting to make a joke about your misspelling of "interpreted".

ah.. Well colour me silly! ;) Well played!

On a more serious note: an excel macro language like VBA pretty much needs to be interperated or the compiler needs to be hidden away like VBA does. As user you shouldn’t have to deal with a compiler step. You can do this with C# pretty well as you can with other languages.

Personally I think it would be really cool if they used TypeScript instead of JavaScript.

Re: Will VBA Die? (2019)

#82

Post by animalnewbie »

I wish Microsoft would just make a CSA already, c# for apps. This would be a huge win on so many fronts that I am shocked they havent done it already.

Increase C# mindshare.

Better Lang means a better ecosystem.

It's a free win.

It's also an ad for office. I started appreciating Outlook and Excel once I had vba filters and maps

Re: Will VBA Die? (2019)

#83

Post by Ididntdothis »

markus_zhang wrote: post #75
kevas wrote: post #63

Nah... why should it? It works and it does what it needs to do and more if you decide to hook into the Windows API or Mac’s API. Want to parse 500mb structured XML file? Okay. Takes 3 seconds or so. I had a lot of fun creating a full featured & modern look & feel application using Excel’s VBA runtime as my platform. Sure... I had to create everything from scratch, but learned so much while doing it. Kind of miss it a…

However, it would take a lot of effort to maintain that 30K+ lines of VBA application. But I think that's because the infrastructure at that time was archaic. If it's today you would probably ditch Access for SQL Server and build reports with something more modern.

Maintaining VBA code is probably easier than maintaining C code. You have all the tools to structure things nicely. You even have classes. One problem is that you can’t version control Excel or Access code. I think that’s the biggest weakness.

Re: Will VBA Die? (2019)

#84

Post by animalnewbie »

CinchWrench wrote: post #64
kevas wrote: post #63

Nah... why should it? It works and it does what it needs to do and more if you decide to hook into the Windows API or Mac’s API. Want to parse 500mb structured XML file? Okay. Takes 3 seconds or so. I had a lot of fun creating a full featured & modern look & feel application using Excel’s VBA runtime as my platform. Sure... I had to create everything from scratch, but learned so much while doing it. Kind of miss it a…

This is so cool. VBA is a gateway drug, for sure. It was my first foray into programming, specifically to solve a problem I knew I could formulate as a shortest path problem. That's led me on quite a journey. The only thing I wish they'd do is update the editor. I like that it feels responsive, I just don't like the lack of line numbers and themes.

I actually cut paste to and from gvim

Re: Will VBA Die? (2019)

#85

Post by cm2187 »

to11mtm wrote: post #55
cm2187 wrote: post #13

Microsoft should rather provide a better path toward office automation rather than just frustrate users. As I have seen it, javascript isn’t even remotely close to the sort of integration that made the success of VBA. Like how can I save a javascript macro as a user? Javascript user defined function? VSTA was a good attempt in its time, a mini visual studio integrated in office with VB.net and C# instead of VB6. That…

VSTO to the best of my knowledge is still a thing. And you could indeed do some pretty cool stuff with it! But it's not as easy to use as VBA, nor was it incredibly easy to work with from a development standpoint when I last tried to use it (Maybe I was doing it wrong, but I had to do a full VS install with the add-in module.)

VSTA, not VSTO. It was a .net IDE embedded in an application the same way VBA works.

Re: Will VBA Die? (2019)

#87

Post by yokohummer7 »

kevas wrote: post #63

Nah... why should it? It works and it does what it needs to do and more if you decide to hook into the Windows API or Mac’s API. Want to parse 500mb structured XML file? Okay. Takes 3 seconds or so. I had a lot of fun creating a full featured & modern look & feel application using Excel’s VBA runtime as my platform. Sure... I had to create everything from scratch, but learned so much while doing it. Kind of miss it a…

But it doesn't have to be VBA. Any language with a decent OLE Automation library would suffice. I've been using Python to automate my Excel files, and am really happy about that. I tried to learn VBA, but could not adapt to its archaic syntax and the clunky VBA editor that comes with Excel.

Re: Will VBA Die? (2019)

#88

Post by flomo »

animalnewbie wrote: post #82

I wish Microsoft would just make a CSA already, c# for apps. This would be a huge win on so many fronts that I am shocked they havent done it already. Increase C# mindshare. Better Lang means a better ecosystem. It's a free win. It's also an ad for office. I started appreciating Outlook and Excel once I had vba filters and maps

Very surprised after all these years (decades?) they have not done something like this. Basic has been a low priority at MS for a long time now.

Re: Will VBA Die? (2019)

#89

Post by jrockway »

NeoBasilisk wrote: post #20
rosybox wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript has a huge upside because a lot of people already know JavaScript. The more tools and platforms switch to JavaScript the more of an office superhero users are when they know something about the language. The productivity of employees will jump off the charts. When you send someone to train for one thing that utilizes JavaScript you get the benefit that those skills may also happen to work with something el…

At some point, I hope we can get past this argument. Learning a new language for rudimentary tasks is not particularly hard. I'm not sure why people decided that JavaScript of all things was what we had to all latch onto.

I have a friend that wanted to learn programming. I suggested Python, but they wanted to go directly into making web apps.

I don't think they finished the class. Javascript just has too many weird concepts (what's the difference between null and undefined and false and 0 and "") that distract from the mechanics of learning what a computer program is, and I also think that the desire to make something others can use too early on leads to going too quickly through the basics ("yeah yeah, add numbers, who needs to do that") and are then overwhelmed when things like objects and promises show up. You have to crawl before you walk.

I think if I were going to introduce someone to programming today, I'd probably pick CircuitPython. Python is simple and makes sense almost immediately. Doing it on a microcontroller lets you make something "neat" almost immediately, and you're spared a lot of the complicated externalities of the real world. (HTML, CSS, dev servers, npm modules, etc.) Some day you can learn all that stuff, but you need to know about if statements and loops and variables first.

I also miss the days of BASIC and Logo. I think those would be fun for the younger generation... but now everyone just wants to make a mobile app and those don't get you there. Ahh, for simpler times.

Re: Will VBA Die? (2019)

#90

Post by remarkEon »

CinchWrench wrote: post #64
kevas wrote: post #63

Nah... why should it? It works and it does what it needs to do and more if you decide to hook into the Windows API or Mac’s API. Want to parse 500mb structured XML file? Okay. Takes 3 seconds or so. I had a lot of fun creating a full featured & modern look & feel application using Excel’s VBA runtime as my platform. Sure... I had to create everything from scratch, but learned so much while doing it. Kind of miss it a…

This is so cool. VBA is a gateway drug, for sure. It was my first foray into programming, specifically to solve a problem I knew I could formulate as a shortest path problem. That's led me on quite a journey. The only thing I wish they'd do is update the editor. I like that it feels responsive, I just don't like the lack of line numbers and themes.

I had to write VBA one summer for an internship, as I was handed this massive spreadsheet that a small to mid-sized business used to run their entire supply chain operation. It was a complete and total mess, with circular references everywhere and random excel formulas that, as far as I could tell, just made everything slower. They were too small at the time to invest in any kind of off-the-shelf solution (though they don't appear to be anymore). Took me about 2 weeks to figure out what the file did, and another 5 or so to learn enough VBA and leverage it to recreate a much lighter and cleaner version. Basically hung out for the last 3 weeks of the internship.

It was cool to use, and after a little bit of a learning curve started making a lot of sense to me. Beyond that though ... I don't see myself ever using it again. Thankful for the opportunity (they took a chance and hired me with zero legitimate experience in that sort of thing), and, yeah, it did make me pick up some other stuff after I was done.

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