VBA Rant #1
May 8, 2008 @ 3:17 AM by JP • 1 views • 3 Comments »
I'm sure by now you are aware that Microsoft has been distancing itself from VBA.
As of July 1, 2007, they are no longer licensing VBA (to new clients). For example, if you wrote a program today and wanted to integrate VBA in it, you are out of luck.
And the new version of Office for Mac will not support VBA at all.
They seem to be pushing their other technologies like VSTO for automating Office programs.
I feel I have to weigh in on this subject because it seems like Microsoft used VBA to lock users into using their software, and is now abandoning them.
Now I realize VBA will still be around for many years. Hell, XLM macros are still working in Excel even after VBA was introduced 13 years ago to replace it. I still see newsgroup posts from people asking for help with macros in Excel 97 (11 years old!). But how long will Microsoft maintain backward compatibility with a language it is discouraging people from using?
I have browsed other languages like .NET, C++, and realize just how familiar VBA is. Maybe it's "Grumpy Old Man Syndrome" setting in early; I can already hear myself saying things like "Back in my day, you could write a macro in 5 minutes to list all the files in a folder!"
This is going to mean that, in general, code will start getting harder to find. VBA is the People's Code; simple to integrate and implement by almost anyone with a little experience. In contrast, you would almost have to be a professional developer to get code working in another language to interact with Office.
"Visual Studio Tools for Applications makes it easier to write reliable, robust, and secure customizations by providing managed extensibility for both COM and .NET applications." [From VSTO Site]
It reminds me of the Mission Statement Generator from Dilbert's website.
Will VBA eventually be deprecated? Will people still be coding in VBA 20 years from now? Or am I just completely off it and worrying about nothing? I will accept any suggestions for what programming language I should start learning.
–JP
I'm just an average guy who writes VBA code for a living. This is my personal blog. Excel and Outlook are my thing, with a sprinkle of Access and Word here and there. Follow this space if you want to learn more about VBA. Keep Reading »
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"code will start getting harder to find"
You can still find lots of VB6 code on the internet, and VB6 was phased out several years ago. Good thing, because it can be dropped into a VBA project without much hassle. VBA has been much more widely used, and I suspect VBA sources will live on for many years on the web, after (not if) it is deprecated a few versions from now.
"you would almost have to be a professional developer to get code working in another language to interact with Office"
This is true: the technical barrier to entry for VSTO and .Net is much higher than it was for XLM and VBA.
You seem pretty confident that VBA will be gone eventually, so we're in agreement. It makes me wonder what the future of Office is, and especially what Microsoft's strategy is here; we'll see future versions still supporting a largely unchanged VBA, until eventually macros start to break (it started already with features like FileSearch which is unavailable in Excel 2007). Personally I have no plans to upgrade past 2003.
I have compared VBA with "VB.NET and PIAs".
VBA
- Development is extremely rapid
- Performance is great
- I am productive
- Cost = Microsoft Office
VB.NET and PIAs
- Development is slow and painful, with a huge overhead of knowledge required because of the conflict between .NET managed code and COM and the need to take own responsibility for COM cleanup.
- Performance is worse
- I am not productive at all
- Cost = Microsoft Office + Visual Studio Standard
Progress?