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Comment by _boffin_ | Hacker News Reader

Because it’s amazing! /s

Years ago, I heard that JP Morgan had +20k access databases on their network. The data analysts that make up companies far and wide one day discovered that they hate what they’re doing every day. They investigate the “record macro” button. Some might even find it nifty. They use it again and again. Some may even try to get smart and investigate and get curious of the code that it spat out. Some might even go further and attempt to learn enough to change some things around.

A handful might just learn data structures and algorithms to build out a auth / permission system that mimics Django. Might rebuild the UserForm UI from scratch. Implement markdown, sax parsing, custom scroll bar, logging, games.

The answer is because a data analyst probably got bored of what they’re doing every day.

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Or possibly they went to the IT department who threw down so much red tape from their ivory tower they were forced into the "shadow IT" sector. I've seen in large enterprises where some analysts have the skills to take the Frankenstein they built to the proper level, but are met with "well we need to start a project and make tickets, timelines, requirements, etc..". They certainly have good reasons - supporting something that anyone has to step into and learn is a valid concern. But as long as the business has access to tools that solve their problems, the "bored" ones will find a way. Too much friction.

I agree, and I'll add this: these people are not exactly bored, they're just the type of people that see a problem, a solution, and got the time to connect them together. Now I think the best attitude toward that particular type of people is to encourage good practices instead of mocking or shutting it down

IT came back asking for a budget of $750,000 to put the macro that one team uses into production.

You get it, "record macro" is the key to this. MS could switch them to C# or JS or python or whatever, if they just added a button which did that.

This is the interesting thing. I haven't played with it myself but seems MS is trying that with their new Beta python script function, but their implementation is just crazy, completely handicapped. Can't see it being a true replacement for VBA in excel.

I haven't investigated the python implementation at all since i no longer work with VBA and or Excel in that fashion anymore. How have they handicapped it?

The code is executed remotely on Microsoft's servers (I can see many organizations just turning this feature off for all staff). I'm open to correction, can't see it in any of the demos, but the code it seems is also entered within a cell, it's not clear whether the output can manipulate/overwrite pre-existing cells as a result or it needs to have its own separate output.

I think proper Python macros is one thing LibreOffice could have implemented years ago, to help attract people and break MS near monopoly on spreadsheets. It exists today, but last time I tried felt very hacky. There was no proper macro editor for it, IIRC you had to extract spreadsheets as if they were zip files and save .py written elsewhere in directories inside. Very cumbersome.

Wasn't aware of this, thanks. I'll give it a try. It's at least a good place to try different things with Python.

Agree, Python implementation in Excel is trash. Not at all a competitor for VBA. Not yet anyway.

Microsoft recently released OfficeScripts, which are JS with a record macro button. Problem is, it's currently too limiting. Will be good in a few decades though if support isn't dropped.

This is the experience I had as well as a lot of other people that start out in Finance and then move on to something related to data engineering or system implementation.

I don't see it ending anytime soon simply because it is easier to build something somewhat complex inside of Excel and put it on a network share than go through IT to install IDE, build something, and then go through security to deploy it. Not every problem requires a jira project and overly complicated solution.

That said, I am wholeheartedly against large things being built in VBA. A few little scripts to query a cube in one system and combine with data from a table in another based on changing values in a few cells is fine but there is a point where you have to go elsewhere.

Ultimately I am a huge fan of of the Alteryx+Tableau/PowerBI stack for the vast majority of projects, so long as you have the server licenses where things can be automated.

Yeah to be honest I did something like this and then I switched to C#. Now I"m just a software developer.

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