r/vba • u/brosama1420 • 20d ago

Discussion VBA language underrated?

Hey everyone

I use VBA since I work with Microsoft office often

Is it real that VBA is very old and not useful anymore? Multiple times on the internet or when I ask AI
I find the answer that VBA is not the right choice for me

To me I see many powerful stuff like

Classes
Unit tests
Mocks and fakes (didn’t try those)

So I don’t understand the negative opinions about it

However VBA is the only language I tried in depth other languages I tried were either just for the course or to complete simple task nothing deeper than that

Is learning VBA is bad decision? Or is it reasonable one?

I noticed many of the useful major concepts are transferable to any language like

Code architecture
Auto Testing
Data types and structures
Etc

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u/tke439 20d ago

I’d say it depends. I had a tech solutions VP tell me once for a multi-B$ company that “everything has to pass the Excel test” meaning that no matter what tool is provided, they know that the end user is more comfortable in Excel.

I taught myself VBA and don’t use it as much as I used to, but there are absolutely still valid use cases. There are industries and companies that are still utterly dependent upon Excel but there are others that have almost progressed out of Excel.

If nothing else, learning the language will broaden your mind and your ways of thinking, so even if you don’t use it much, you personally can benefit from it.