A week ago I was willing to find a way to unlock easily *.xlsb files. Thus, I have found the software of VbaDiff and I have kindly asked Mr. Chris Spicer for a review copy. It turned out that VbaDiff could do much more than just unlocking *.xlsb files easily. My whole review is published here. In the meantime, Chris found time to answer me 5 questions. Thus, the small interview is published here:
- Describe yourself with 3 sentences (or 3 words) 🙂
Coder, Builder, Entrepreneur.
- When did you start to code with VBA? How much experience with Excel or programming did you have already, before writing your first code in VBA. How did you hear about it?
I started writing VBA to convert a spreadsheet table into test data that mimicked telephone switch data. I was working as a tester at the time and was really struggling to get the right data. One of our customers told me that he had a prototype in VBA and was generous enough to give me a copy.
- What was you first idea about it? Did you like it immediately or you had to wait for a year or so?
I took to VBA pretty quickly. It was so productive.
- Do you hear a lot of people saying that VBA is not real programming (whatever “real programming” means, I hear it probably every second month). What do you think about it? (Although you are a C# programmer, but still…)
I learned all of my ‘best practice’ programming during my VBA days. It’s so easy to start down the wrong path with VBA that it really forces you to think about the structure of your project, your code and your architecture.
- Do you think that there is a gap in the IT-industry for good VBA programmers – not many good programmers code in VBA (or have even heard about it) and the people who code in VBA are usually advanced excel users (if you compare the knowledge of the VBA coders with Java coders for example).
There’s definitely a market for talented VBA programmers, particularly since VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) never took off.
Pretty much, I am always happy and passionate to blog about VBA. If you are a VBA developer and want to share something with me, please use the contact link. 🙂