VB .Net vs. VBA

[cocojojo]

Dear Developers,

I'm right on the cusp of learning new programing languages- pretty comfortable with all complex in-cell function, started writing a few VBA macros to do some trickier things. I recently met with a colleague of mine who is much more involved with software development to discuss further applications of VBA in Excel and he suggested that since I am more or less a blank canvas, I should invest my time learing VB .Net instead.

Right now I work exclusively in Excel, but I guess the goal is for that to change in the future. I would appreciate your opinions on this issue as well as comments regarding the use of VB .Net with Excel.

Thanks

 

[Mike_R]

Hi cocojojo,

This is just an opinion, but I would suggest that you stick with VBA for your standard development with Excel. Using .NET is definitely the next step, but it makes your Excel development much harder.

Using .NET has many advantages, mostly regarding strong-typing, but VBA has enormous advantages over .NET when it comes to deployment. VBA is also an easier language to start out with, especially for working with Excel, which has many members that do not have strong typed return values.

Overall, I would suggest that you use VBA for your day-to-day development, but learn VB.NET or C# on the side so that your programming skills can grow outside of the Excel arena. Eventually, your .NET skills can become strong enough so that you will prefer to use it over VBA, but you will have to become pretty good at .NET for that day to come.

Just my 2c...
Mike

 

[cocojojo]

Mike,

Thank you for the advice- VBA seems much more manageable for the time being.

 

[Norie]

Why not learn the basic concepts of programming?

You could then apply them whatever language you want/need to use as well as using the specifics for that language.