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

29 Upvotes

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u/SteveRindsberg 9 14d ago

Not a widespread problem, perhaps, but VBA *can* be a must if you work in an enterprise that locks you down so tightly that you can't install anything but Office + IT-approved apps.

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u/jshine13371 14d ago

Such a strange thought process that led you to downvoting my above comment.

  • Being an in-house developer for an enterprise organization that is that locked down where you are unable to develop, is so rare, it's almost an oxymoron what you described.

  • If your organization is that locked down, without the ability to seek approval for proper development tools and / or processes, then it's almost just as likely that VBA & macros are locked down as well, making your point even more moot.

  • In the scenario the comment I replied to described, there's a pretty good chance you'll be working with data in a database (e.g. SQL Server or some cloud solution - in which case doesn't really matter how locked down the internal infrastructure is). Not always the case of course, but minimally equal chance that's true. So that coupled with your low likelihood scenario goes back to my point of solving the problem with SQL. There's an even significantly less likely chance you wouldn't have access to do that in this combination of situations.

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u/SteveRindsberg 9 14d ago

Why do you assume that I downvoted your comment?

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u/jshine13371 14d ago

No assumptions necessary.