ProgrammerHumor
ohGodWhy
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"Do you know VBA ?"
I helped a lady in accounting a bit ago with an excel spreadsheet vba. Document came from japan, about 700 lines of vba. all the comments were in Japanese and the variable names were romanticized spelling of Japanese words, i had to open the file in vscode where i could change the encoding so that the Japanese characters showed correctly and then google translated all the comments. After that i actually had to track down the users issue. It was driven by another worksheet that the user would select in an explorer browser. 2 days of debugging later i figured out the issue was user error for not properly formatting the second spreadsheet.
This would be my 13th reason
User error lol. My first and last possibility of where the error came from to begin with.
Always worth trying to duplicate the bug first exactly. See if the user can duplicate it or if it's an extreme edge can. Lol
Honestly that’s crazy impressive
I bet cursor could figure it out
If cursor is an AI i might just block you lmao
block him
I prefer to stay homeless.
>! This is a joke people, asking people to use VBA is clearly not allowed by the Geneva convention !<
I honestly use VBA at work and I kinda find it fun, alright sometimes I scratch my head for hours to find out what's the problem, but I also do that in other languages. So I don't really have a problem with VBA.
How about VB.net?
When i was in engineering school the first language they taught us was VBA. Not because we'd ever need that, but because the teacher knew that particular language. In the first 3 of 5 years we did less C++ than we did in the 4th grade of middle school
Back in ~2002 I wrote some VBA testing software (to pick multiple choice questions randomly depending on category) and ended up designing a whole “application” around Access as a summer project for testing some nuclear reactor operators.
Bow before me. LOL.
I can't believe that some employers low tables so much
Vee bea eh?
I started programming access databases … in the 90s.
Thats how I started too! They were using excel sheets on shared drives, but were running into issues where the file was locked, and we used MS Access to many people (3-4 people) could make changes at the same time.
How does it work? Aren't there primary key conflicts when many people are adding a new record to this same table?
Same way it works on mysql, postsql, ms-sql. I would be lying if I told you I really understood it, but basically it's just transaction locking and auto incrementing keys are kinda magic lol
You seperate the front end and back end. Backend sits on a network drive. Front end installs on each machine. Sort of like a real database. Which it is in a way. A real crap database. In a team of 4 it would still get locked up every other day.
I ended up making a quick winforms front end onto a SQL db and it was flawless after that. And no more difficult to make. That was one of the first things that made me want to transition into software.
Sort of related to the OP, I graduated with a civil engineering degree 15 years ago into the same market as we see for developers today. Engineering degrees are tough and to finish one and then end up starting minimum wage was gutting. Then to not use my engineering skills and just muck about making software initially felt like a kick in the teeth.
But I've quite enjoyed it. So silver lining, there might be something else that works out pretty well for you. That said, right now I wish I'd managed to get into engineering because I'd likely not be hearing as much about AI replacements and not be faced with continually devaluing salaries.
Now thinking about it, we kinda did it different, we setup ms-sql on a server then used ms-access to manage it. It's been.. 15 years? so I don't really recall.
But I like how you guys did it too
Yeah if I'm honest I went MS SQL with access front end as first step. Then a few days later replaced the access front end with winforms. At that point it was also easier to add other useful functions. Like one of the things was an image viewer to show files from a shared drive. And a simple calculator tool.
Thank you for deeper explanation
I had a project decades ago in state government to convert one of these types of homegrown solutions into a proper .Net/SQL Server web app. The problem was that whoever created it used text fields for everything with predictable results. Data that should have been a date had thing like "last Wednesday" in it.
While I wasn't *that* bad, we used text fields for .. basically everything not a date. It took me more time than I'd care to admit to realize I should store the data in the db as ints or doubles, instead of text X_X. But I was young and dumb!
Isn't that how we all started?
I started on an extremely legacy VB.NET app that had been more or less generated through Visual Studio with some OG vibe coding (no AI, though- circa 2005) by one guy in college that, with me on the team, was up to three people trying to make it do something sensible.
So, no Access DB, but still a rough ride.
Paid for a good chunk of my college tuition.
How 'great' was that database wizard? It would create a database that was 80% there but to get it the last 20%, you have to rewrite nearly the entire thing.
Lol fine by me if it pays well. Better than executives pushing random tech buzzwords they heard in some conference. Rewriting our entire codebase every 5 months with whatever the latest flavor of the week is.
Pfffft, you wouldn’t be rewriting your entire codebase . . . THAT’S WHY WE HAVE COPILOT!
If you want high paying job security, learn some old language or framework. You wouldn’t believe all the systems still running on old obscure languages, too big to replace and not enough skilled programmers to maintain
Do you mean php?
Yup, can confirm as a sysdev working for a major bank. I maintain code that's older than I am.
include sheet continue alive cause lush pocket instinctive snatch connect
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
And insurance
Better yet. Create an abstraction that you can use your favorite language to out put to something historic ( eventually get the buyin to switch to it native )
Wouldn't it be easier to pick up the old framework after you've become a skilled programmer in newer languages? Do companies really hire for people with knowledge of obscure frameworks?
Literally my job lol
Sometimes job is job... and thats enough
Tbf that's how a lot of the current software workforce got their starts as well
It's not that bad. My first paying gig was in 99 doing VB + Access DB stuff.
My condolences.
I hope that your life is better now
I tested a system in VB6 + Access in 2008. Is still sold today to small companies.
I work for a very large company. We have VB .Net stuff that is still in prod today.
VB.Net is miles better than VB 6.
Ya, it is. It's still hilarious to see a company with over $1B a year in revenue using it in prod.
VBA was good for getting my foot in the door, but man doing excel scripting made me feel like I was going backwards
Yes. Learning how to program doesn't seem like you should do excel scripts. But all of this was a bigger plan to get you ready for Excel scripts
Omg… I am the hiring manager in this picture 🥲
You're a monster!
That will be me soon! Hooray 🥳
Yay! Wish you this honor to code some Microsoft Access
And it begins the sacred rite of DoCmd.OpenForm and crying into Excel sheets. We don’t choose the mission, Access chooses us.
Why use Access when you have Excel?
Because you can have multiple user use it at once
A long time ago I did a contract for a bank that involved wiring up an external application to an Excel spreadsheet through DDE and a pile of VBA.
That (and many other, similar) experiences lead to Remy’s Law of Requirements Gathering: no matter what the users asked for, what they really wanted was Excel.
The best DB I used so far
It could be worse:
"I need you... to program my Microsoft Excel database"
Like we didn't do this 20 years ago. My first job was programming a Windows GUI in SQL.
Now get off my lawn.
As it was 25 years ago, too
Could be worse... could be some businesses proprietary language. Long long time ago used to work for Disney who had a Java scripting language that essentially predated Groovy... was on a team to thankfully migrate away from that but we still had to sustain those apps until the switch could occur.
Banks used to be pretty notorious for this as well... was about to get swept up soon after graduating by a bank with their custom DSL they used for building their financial applications.
The early post .com era of web development was "interesting" times; about all I can say.
At least it's not Sharepoint!
People still use access?
Bro, they use Excel to run whole company!
I know but it never crossed my mind that people still use access
I did that for an internship.
After 9 months of being jobless, I'd do it again in a heartbeat!
People still use MS Access?
Holy cow! Lol
I have two jr dev interns on my team, they're exceptional and I love mentoring them :3
😐😐
That was my first real job lol. Only lasted 6 months though (I wasn’t hired on after the trial period)
It was also my first time working with databases, so kinda learned a lot. Did have PostGreSQL as the actual database though. Access was just front end for the most part.
This was in 2021 btw
I made good money out of Access for years. Better than unemployment.
Nice, good that you show that it's possible!
I figured it's better money than working in a coal mine or a sewage works. Even if it is less honourable.
Same as it ever was...
I started working in 97 right out of University. You think they would give me some Java or VB or something new?
NOPE FoxPro.
I'd rather go and work in a coal mine than go back to working on VBA and Access projects
Get in, loser - we're maintaining ActiveX in VB6
Fast paced, dynamic environment with a cutting edge development department
looks inside:
Java 6
At least it's not Java 5
That actually rhymes and sounds evil. You must be a villain