Excel VBA dead ?

[syswizard]

Here is an interesting recent job posting for a 6 month engagement:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Candidate will be responsible to provide ad-hoc reporting and analysis
support to mid and Sr. management for internal and external IT
performance metrics using Microsoft Excel ONLY.

Expert level experience in MS Excel is required. However, no VBA is
required and will not be used. In fact, VBA will be frowned upon if it
is used.

 

[Jim Cone]

Well, I put a different interpretation on the ad.
To me, it means no code at all is allowed.
--
Jim Cone
San Francisco, USA
http://www.realezsites.com/bus/primitivesoftware


"syswizard"
<[email protected]>
wrote in message
Here is an interesting recent job posting for a 6 month engagement:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Candidate will be responsible to provide ad-hoc reporting and analysis
support to mid and Sr. management for internal and external IT
performance metrics using Microsoft Excel ONLY.

Expert level experience in MS Excel is required. However, no VBA is
required and will not be used. In fact, VBA will be frowned upon if it
is used.

 

[Tim Williams]

Looks pretty odd to me: "expert level Excel" users presumably know when VBA
is appropriate and when not.
Maybe some [misplaced] distrust of "macros" from a security standpoint ?

Tim

 

[NickHK]

I took it to mean they had some concerns over security and considered VBA a
threat.
If it is necessary to extend Excels capabilities, then VBA is applicable.
That's its intended purpose.
If they need only relatively simple/straight forward support, then "no VBA
is required" is reasonable. However, without knowing exactly what the
expect, the statement that "VBA will be frowned upon if it is used" seems
somewhat premature, especially considering the bells and whistles such users
are apt to demand.

They don't mention Macro4/dialogs though. They're not VBA <g>.

NickHK

 

[ilia]

Well, VBA code can be useful for a "quick fix" in the few data
formatting scenarios where you need to do some kind of processing that
you can't do with combination of worksheet functions, filtering, pivot
tables, and so forth. But 99% of the time, when a "custom solution"
is not required, programming won't be necessary for analysis, either.

 

[syswizard]

I'm trying to get a response from the original recruiter. Again, this
is a very odd req ("Expert Excel without VBA" = oxymoron) and I would
like to know the real reason behind the nixing of VBA. I haven't seen
anything done in Excel that is impressive as a standalone application
without VBA. I mean, to me, when specific requirements need to be met,
VBA is 80% of Excel.

 

[syswizard]

I'm trying to get a response from the original recruiter. Again, this
is a very odd req ("ExpertExcelwithoutVBA" = oxymoron) and I would
like to know the real reason behind the nixing ofVBA. I haven't seen
anything done inExcelthat is impressive as a standalone application
withoutVBA. I mean, to me, when specific requirements need to be met,VBAis 80% ofExcel.

Well, the recruiter did not know anything (typical) and somehow the
posted position got filled (poor sucker).
Anyway, I am inclined to think that Excel development may be
stagnating for several reasons relative to the new 2007 release:
1) No VBA improvements
2) No consideration for better code security
3) No architectural changes such as multi-threading
4) No speed improvements, in fact quite the opposite

There is a small company that has introduced a Java-based spreadsheet
that looks promising....fully programmable, and multi-threaded.