VBA Going Away, Macs Now, PCs Soon

Nom du Keyboard writes "As Microsoft drops support for older Office file formats, it looks like Visual Basic for Applications is also going soon. Mac Office 2008 has dropped VBA in favor of enhanced support for AppleScript, and Office 2009 is scheduled to lose it in favor of Mac incompatible Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) or Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). This sounds like the Mother of All Backwards and Cross-Platform Incompatibilities — especially since there appears to be no transition period where both the old and new scripting languages will be simultaneously supported. And as past experience with Visual Studio .NET has shown, upgrade tools are far less than perfect."

Comments

Hello I am a Mac and I am a PC.

[LWATCDR]

So Mac you thought you where so funny. Well take this! "PC throws a chair label Cross platform compatability right out a Window".
So what you going to do about Mister I am so much cooler than a PC!.
Mac pick up the phone.
"Hello Open Office org?, Yea this is Mac I have a message from Steve for you. How would you like a big pile of cash and about a hundred programers? Really great they will be right over."

Well, it's a start.

[TW Atwater]

Let me know when they dump Windows.

Re:Microsoft Tools...

[geminidomino]

I wrote a bunch of VBA many years ago (hey, I was young and needed the money :P), You should have been a hooker. It would have done less damage to your soul and self-respect. :)

Unrelated VS jab?!?

[RingDev]

And as past experience with Visual Studio .NET has shown, upgrade tools are far less than perfect What the hell is the point of that statement??

1) It has nothing to do with the software in focus.

2) Converting from framework 1.0 to 1.1 was almost effortless, and while converting from 1.1 to 2.0 usually took a tad bit of refinement, compiling a 2.0 application for the 3.0 or 3.5 framework is trivial. VS.Net 2k8 has the option built in so that you can work on 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 framework compilations with nothing more than a project property change.

3) The VB6 to .Net 1.0 converter was actually highly functional, IF your VB6 code was abstracted and tiered in an OO manner. Unfortunately, most VB6 code was written, well, crappily as compared to current OO standards, and thus there was not much that could be done for automatic translation. Although the output would tell you specifically what wouldn't work, and where to read KB articles to learn about new ways of doing the same thing.

That aside, dropping VBA seems like an INSANE thing to do. Not that I like VBA, it's existance is a thorn in my side. But the fact that VBA is so ingrained into the corporate atmosphere. MS is in a pretty rough spot with Office. Office 2k was a great product. Office 2k3 introduced only marginal improvements that were hard to justify to the accountants. Office 2k7 has some neat stuff, but with the new interface and no new functionality for the majority of users, justifying it to both the accountants AND users was difficult. Now the next version of Office is going to abandon VBA, which means that the IT development departments are going to have to either develop real apps for all the users who depend on those heavily modified excel spread sheets, or you're going to have to get some training on the new scripting language for your employees. Either way, that is a HUGE financial investment beyond the $300 license.

-Rick

Zero-based arrays

[wiredlogic]

Good. Can we have our zero-based arrays back now?

You Sig.. Windows Progs & Linux

[Dareth]

sol.exe runs just fine using Wine for Linux... what you mean people do something else with their Windows boxes?

Re:Cross Platform?

[smittyoneeach]

You're supposed to use Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA).
Seems to remind me of some other smash hit from Redmond...Bob? Millenium Edition? DOS? What was that thing...

Shoehorn is a good word

[Bryansix]

Please stop using shoehorn as a transitive verb in that manner. The way you used it you implied it to mean "squeezing something into a space in which it will not fit". However it should be used as a transitive verb only as follows. I shoehorned my foot into my shoe. My foot fits in my shoe just fine thank you very much but I use a shoehorn because it is EASIER. Using the shoehorn is not wrong. Yet when you use the word they way you did you give it a negative conotation which is lame. Shoehorns are awesome and the word should only be used to convey awesomeness!

Re:Time for Java

[jollyreaper]

Not a troll. "Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OSes is like saying
that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders."
(Alanna)

Sort of a troll but it's still funny. :)

Re:Die Visual Basic

[angus_rg]

At least the egotistical VBS programmers stood upright in comparison to the documenters who thought the HTML "code" they wrote was a programming language. They're still mouth breathers dragging their knuckles on the ground, but still, they could stand.

Re:Time for Java

[Creepy Crawler]

"Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OSes is like saying
that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders."

Try species.

Baaa means YES.

Re:Time for Java

[kat_skan]

"Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OSes is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders."

Try species.

You are either incredibly macho, or trying to get someone mauled to death by bears for a very unusual reason.

Re:Cross Platform?

[smittyoneeach]

Are you suggesting that Redmond use a tool whose original author is a Google employee?
Have this madman removed.