VBA Sucks???

[Sitten Spynne]

I could say a lot about why I like JS, and if people were writing code more like the Agile/testable movement advocates (which is really their contribution, not the process) then VB starts to feel like its type safety gets in the way.

It's kind of moot, though. I think what Office needs more than a new language is a new automation API. The boilerplate .NET for Excel interop reminds me of the boilerplate for a "Hello World" app in C, it's just as impenetrable for a newbie, and it's just as catastrophic if you get a tiny bit of it wrong. I don't really care which language they choose, but I think the reason they're so reliant on late binding is because COM demands it.

VBA doesn't suck any more or less than JS. In the hands of unskilled developers, every language is some degree of terrible. But the Office automation API almost demands a usage pattern that's more Goofus than Gallant. If it's hard to do the right thing when you have skill and discipline, expecting newbies (especially "not a programmer" newbies) to work with it is cruel.