[AccessD] VBA abandoned in Office 2008 for Mac

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Fri Jun 1 11:23:23 CDT 2007


And in the end, it is all the same to me as I will not be directly
supporting it anyway.  I will be using .Net directly by that time and all of
my new clients will be using .Net developed applications.  Only automation
will be used.

The ribbon bar, all by itself, has shown me that MS does not have the
developer's interests in mind and with that so clearly demonstrated it is
time to move on. 


John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Ken Ismert
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 12:08 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] VBA abandoned in Office 2008 for Mac


(Marty)
 > Are you reading the same post. He is discussing 2007 macros and VBA ...

Yes, the same post. Just lines below your quote, a reader asks point-blank:

"However do you confirm that VBA will be supported from the next release of
Access?"

No answer.

You can interpret that any way you care, but I don't consider that a
positive confirmation that VBA will be natively supported in Office 14. 
A just-as-plausible interpretation is that VBA is replaced with VSTA in the
next Office, and we get a separate conversion/backwards compatibility tool
with read-only legacy VBA support, a-la Mac. And Office 2007 users still
have 7 or 8 years of  legacy support for their VBA apps. That scenario meets
the letter of Clint's rather bland affirmation.

Recall, all development of VB6 and VBA ceased in 1998. Microsoft has a
10-year legacy support window. Now, in 2008, VBA is gone in the latest
Office release. All extended support for VB6 has ceased. It would be
extraordinary for Microsoft to continue including unsupported code in its
upcoming Office releases.

Microsoft is putting nearly a billion dollars into the next version of
Office. All of that code will be .NET code. That sounds like a complete
rewrite to me.

In my view, the consequences of thinking maybe its time to look at new
technologies are only positive, while the consequences of assuming VBA will
always be around are neutral at best, and could potentially be bad for your
career, if you do lose your bet.

So, I think it is incumbent on the 'VBA forever' side to come up with the
home-run: a clear affirmation of native VBA support in Office 14 from a
credible source.

-Ken

--
AccessD mailing list
AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd
Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com




More information about the AccessD mailing list