Microsoft has moved away from the COM stack, VB6 is so last century and .Net rules the (MS) roost. Yet I find myself still banging out reams of VBA code am I dinosaur? The need for VBA is a new project automating Excel seeing as you ask.I've tried to doing the same kind of thing using VSTO and it was just too damn buggy/hard/inefficient with a broken development model. I can't get rid of the feeling that I'm missing something, OTOH I really can't see a better way of solving this problem. What are your thoughts?
In the world of .Net, managed code and the web is there still a place for VBA?
microsoft
Of course there is still a need.Why is .net the big thing? Because it makes visual app development quick and easy - MS learned all that from Borland and thus was born .net. (Borland used to have one of the few really easy visual dev environments that could make native win32 executables).All these other things and tools are still needed - the need for native win32 apps is however something that incites passionate argument. I'd argue the need for Win32 native apps will never go away. That's a side issue, but related.If you want to generate an app / automation for word, excel, access, visio, etc etc then VBA is fast, simple, and tightly integrated. Why should it go away? Heck you can still do Excel macros of the kind that went out of fashion 15 years ago. Nobody much does because there are other ways that are better/faster/easier to understand.Each tool has its place - if trying to use somethind else in place of VBA takes longer / costs more / is more difficult then its effectively trying to jam square pegs in round holes.The software business is FULL of people with Hammer Syndrome. You know the one: To a man with a hammer the whole world looks like a nail. Well every new s/w technology has its mad keen devotees who think it will solve every problem known to man, and then some. They are always wrong. Always have been, always will be.