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I guess VB/Basic should have become the popular scripting language & not python, if it was envisioned correctly.
The makers of VB had an average vision. I think, they focused much on the visual part. That's okay.
May be the VB*S* should have branched out and gone out to do a lot more things than sticking just with Office automation stuff.
The makers & supporters of python had better vision, now the snake rules the planet.
May be I'm wrong, python might have had its unique strength, from the very beginning.
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Nand32 wrote: I guess VB/Basic should have become the popular scripting language & not python, if it was envisioned correctly.
Visual Basic existed before the internet became into view, and python only existed on some freak Linux box.
Nand32 wrote: The makers of VB had an average vision. I think, they focused much on the visual part. That's okay.
"Vision" is marketing-bullshit. VB catered to a lots of hobby-devs, and was used to create a LOT of desktop-applications.
Nand32 wrote: May be the VB*S* should have branched out and gone out to do a lot more things than sticking just with Office automation stuff.
It has. .NET connects everything from Office and your Exchange server to your Database and Azure 
Nand32 wrote: The makers & supporters of python had better vision, now the snake rules the planet.
Due to no free version of VB being available and piracy going down. Python was available for free and could be used without having to create a rich GUI. It was not vision, it was luck.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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VB is not a scripting language. VBScript is, and the similarity between the two is approximately the same as comparing Java with JavaScript. 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
modified 26-Feb-19 7:13am.
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VB lived on as VBA which is a scripting language.
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VB and VBA is not the same even though they have common roots.
And VB didn't "live on" as VBA.
VB still exists in more or less the same form as for 20 years ago, whereas VBA is more or less dead.
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
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VB still exists but VBA is dead? Are you serious? Nobody uses VB any more but we still use VBA in Office. Yes, even today, right now.
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VB is a the name of a series of products, sharing a common syntax. VB (like in VB4 and 6) does not "live on" as VBA; VBA already existed. There was also eVB, for embedded programming and VBScript for scripting/automation.
All of those are being replaced with a .NET environment.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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VB and VBA pretty much only differ in terms of their host environment and when I said it lives on as VBA I meant that we still use VBA today but we no longer use VB.
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F-ES Sitecore wrote: VB and VBA pretty much only differ in terms of their host environment
You mean you find the syntax very similar.
F-ES Sitecore wrote: we still use VBA today but we no longer use VB.
"We" does not include "us" then. First of all you'll only find VBA today in products that are past their support-date. Second, I know a few companies here that still rely on a VB6-compiler.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Yeah, you're right. Every single copy of Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc in use today still uses VBA, millions of apps, but there are a few companies who still use VB to support legacy apps so me saying we still use VBA but we don't use VB is clearly wrong. The fact that one person in the world still uses one technology means we should never generlise or simplify and never declare that something isn't in use because people aren't intelligent enough to realise it is a generalisation and that you're not actually claiming that no-one in the whole world uses it ever. Some people might think someone who claims that really does understand what is being said but is simply nit-picking in order to create an argument on the internet when no argument actually exists.
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F-ES Sitecore wrote: Nobody uses VB
Sorry, but many of us supporting live environments have tens of thousands of lines of legacy code written in VB. Even though the shop that I am in is now (officially) a C# environment, the legacy means that most of my work is still in VB. I expect that that is true of many CPers in many locations.
Python is this week's Perl / PHP - OK for writing pretty pages on a browser; but will be supplanted by some newer flavour-of-the-week language. Meanwhile, VB / Java etc will still be running most closed environments.
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jsc42 wrote: Sorry, but many of us supporting live environments have tens of thousands of lines of legacy code written in VB
I think it's fairly obvious I meant for new developments.
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And for a new development, you'd use VBA?
This reminds me of a movie I saw once, so 'scuse me for asking Demolition Man, but have you been frozen in ice for 20 years and recently thawed up for a development project that needed old time expertise? 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
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Johnny J. wrote: And for a new development, you'd use VBA?
VBA is for scripting, not for building new apps. To answer your question though, if I was building something that scripted Office like advanced processing in Word, or custom calculations in Excel, then yes I would use VBA. In fact if you've ever recorded a macro in Office you're using VBA. VBA is still used today, yes, that's why I said we still use VBA but not VB because that is a factually correct statement.
I feel like I've been taking crazy pills.
Edit: before anyone mentions, the fact that you can also automate Office via COM in standalone apps doesn't invalidate anything I've said in this post. Especially the part about the crazy pills.
modified 26-Feb-19 10:09am.
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F-ES Sitecore wrote: VBA is still used today, yes, that's why I said we still use VBA but not VB because that is a factually correct statement.
You're being inconsistent in your arguments. When we discuss VB, you say that you're talking about new developments, when we're talking about VBA, suddenly that's no longer the case.
However: VB as in "real" Visual Basic used for application development is still very much being used - even in new development projects. The fact you you claim it isn't doesn't make it any less true.
As for VBA: Yes, I'm sure that there is still people out there who still uses it, because they have old spread sheets or whatever with custom calculations and they are too stubborn or lazy or ignorant to upgrade their ancient solutions to 2019 equivalents.
As for your claim that you'd use if for building new scriptings in Word or Excel TODAY, I'd say that you'd be doing yourself and everybody a huge bear service. VBA may still exist in Office, but Microsoft is trying actively to dissuade the use of it.
Personally, I haven't used VBA for ANYTHING in more than 15 years, but as by a mere coincidence, this very morning I had an Excel task for which I thought it could be an idea to use VBA to solve it. What are the chances of such a coincidence? I don't know, but I feel like I must buy myself a lottery ticket on the way home.
So what happened? I coded a short code snippet for my task, and tried to save the file. BANG! First problem: You cannot save documents containing code in the "new" file format (xlsx, and I use "new" in the widest sence of the meaning since it's been around for 12 years now). So by simply using VBA, you're forced to save your document in a 12+ year old format?!?!? 
I had to do it the ancient way like our ancestors and save it in the old xls format. And BANG! comes problem number two: Every time I have to open or save or actually do anything with this file, I get a Microsoft message saying that it contains contents that can cause incompatibilities or loss of data or whatever it says - because of the old file format!
At that time, I gave up and reverted to the newer version of the document WITHOUT any VBA customizations and I solved the problem in another way.
Hence my claim that VBA is dead, becuase even though it still exists, it's virtually unusable.
I also feel that you've taken crazy pills, and I can't really understand how anybody can be SO completely out of touch with reality??? 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
modified 26-Feb-19 10:27am.
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Johnny J. wrote: When we discuss VB, you say that you're talking about new developments, when we're talking about VBA, suddenly that's no longer the case.
I'm just ensuring we have an understanding of the syntax we're using. When I talk about new developments I mean new stand-alone applications, but you don't write applications in VBA. I wanted to be clear that while you're correct that I wouldn't use VBA in a "new development" that isn't because VBA is not in use today but because you don't write apps in VBA. So I'm just being explicit about what I mean when I say "development". When you say development if you mean a project in general, then in that case I would say "yes", you would use VBA in a new development. The answer depends on the definition of "development", so I hope that clears that issue up.
Johnny J. wrote: VB as in "real" Visual Basic used for application development is very much still being used - even in new development projects.
Again I fear we're having issues with definitions here. When you say "VB" are you including "VB.net", as that makes it an entirely different argument. If by "VB" you mean "VB.net" then yes that is in use today, obviously, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the VB family (VB, VB2, VB3, VB4, VB5 and VB6). If by "VB" you really do mean VB and you're claiming that because 0.00000000000000001% of new developments uses it means I can't say "it isn't in use" or "no-one uses it anymore" then that is simply a ridiculous argument.
As for the rest of your post I find it kind strange that you're telling me I can't claim no-one uses VB because 0.00000000000000001% of projects use it, and in the same post imply that VBA isn't in use because you...one single person....don't like it? 
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F-ES Sitecore wrote: because you...one single person....don't like it?
Oh, I base it on much more than that. That was merely an illustration of one of the reason why it isn't used anymore....
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
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Johnny J: You can't say VB isn't in use because 0.0000000000001% of projects use it
Also Johnny J: You can't say VBA is still in use because I don't use it
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Well, if you don't believe me, why don't you just ask CP to make a poll about it??? Problem solved!
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
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Johnny J: You can't say VB isn't in use because 0.0000000000001% of projects use it
Also Johnny J: You can't say VBA is still in use because a poll of a minute sample say they don't use it
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Are you stuck in a time loop John Spartan? 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
-
Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
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I also think the draw to Python has a little to do with the anti-Microsoft mantra, as well.
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Python created its own world: Its own installers, directory structures, identification, bug tracking and reporting... I guess this was deliberate. They wanted to close everything else out of their world, to be in control. Not cooperating with anyone (except to a very limited degree having others be their servants, delivering interfaces to the functions hard to get at in pure Python).
This power strategy succeeded. They managed to create an almost entirely closed ecosystem that was good enough for an increasing number of developers to move into. And the developers found it cosy and warm and all threats from competing ideas were closed out.
I don't mind Python as a language (except that I dislike all interpreted, non-compiled languages in general). But that power strategy goes on my nerves, trying to make things work in a mixed-language environment. Those Python guys refuse to relate to anything but Python at all. Whatever is used in other activities / projects is bluntly rejected, unless there is a Python interface so that they can pretend that the world is all Python...
There is so much about the Python "society" that reminds me of the worst stories about MS strategy, even those with no truth to them. It seems like if you have a non-commercial (hah!) ideology, then those detestable methods are fully acceptable and even loveable!
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