| I've been surprised to see many pro devs using Excel/VBA as a secondary tool. One example: a couple years ago I was working with a big hedge fund and one of their data analysts sent me an Excel model he had built and I was tickled to see the .xlsm extension (i.e., VBA code on board). "Ahh ha", I thought, "Let's see what these macro-recording cowboys have been up to." There was a lot of VBA inside, all written by this Caltech comp sci data analyst who was a Python superstar. The VBA was for pulling data from a database, putting it on a sheet, building some formulas, and some pretty formatting. There were even a few userforms! I teased him, "VBA? What else are you guys using over there? A cotton gin and a steam shovel?" I was startled to hear him heap praise upon Excel and VBA instead of the usual complaints. He said something that stuck with me, "Excel makes it easy to understand the dependency structure that is implied by computations. If I had done this in Python, I'd be answering questions about it all day long." |