Darryl Collins
darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au
Mon Jul 14 18:52:49 CDT 2014
" But dammit, if you have had many years to fix something, why the heck not fix it, that is unforgivable and beyond me" All good points Bill. Regarding the quote above. I suspect a huge part of the issue is that MS (like most companies) will focus on keeping most of their users happy with minimal return (and why not). What the masses wanted was an additional 16 Gazillion colours to go on their expanded pie charts, merged cells and other highly visible and colourful fluff. In a lot of places 'style' rules over 'substance' or even function. The other Problem is there is bugger all advantage / kudos to MS for fixing any obscure VBA inconsistencies that most users don't even know about (and risking screwing up something else significant). I guess they figure that any developer smart enough to find these issues is also smart enough to work around them, or so entrenched in MS VBA that the occasional SNAFU is expected and will not drive them to another product. In short, The risk / reward / return ratios don't add up for MS to go ahead and fix up those lingering issues. Much better to add more colours and pictures - aaaah, and just look at those new 45 different Pie Charts! ;) Cheers Darryl. -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Bill Benson Sent: Tuesday, 15 July 2014 9:32 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: Re: [AccessD] Somewhat OT: Satya Nadella's memo. Starting FY15 - Bold Ambition & Our Core I, well as usual, sorta agree, and also mildly disagree. People who are very capable (perhaps not expert) in one typically are not quite as capable in another. But to me that is done damage. Were MS to create a unified object model from here on out, would you want to learn all the differences? I have much more problem with stuff not working throughout the entire history of a single application's object model; or breaking between versions; or taking away (worse than deprecating) something I had come to rely on, or which running code still relies on; or never fixing something that ought simply to work better. For example, recently learning that EVALUATE( ) [note: Excel] does not work with more than 255 characters ... although formulas on-sheet can be thousands of characters. Or that using EVALUATE in conjunction with defined names embedded in the argumane leads Excel to assume that the ActiveWorkbook is the one that contains the defined name, rather than the workbook which is running the frigging EVALUATE code. Or at least let me choose, for goodness sake. Or the fact that SUBTOTAL begins to no longer nest the totals in proper row order once the number of columns exceeds 30. I do not have a problem with the development team for Word and Powerpoint and Excel and Access being only moderately tied together, as all those applications do VERY different things and I would expect it to be a lot to ask an entire fleet of developers, what with all they are groomed for and having to keep their eyes out for new and competing technology and multiple platforms, and different sets of problems to identify and crack, across apps - that to me is forgivable. But dammit, if you have had many years to fix something, why the heck not fix it, that is unforgivable and beyond me. -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Darryl Collins Sent: Monday, July 14, 2014 7:19 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] Somewhat OT: Satya Nadella's memo. Starting FY15 - Bold Ambition & Our Core I strongly concur here with Mark. Each individual Office app has it's own quirks and inconsistencies with the object model and syntax. It is clear that they were designed and built by separate dev teams and didn't have a clear and standard way of doing things. Given the separate and organic nature of the Office suite of apps in their early days this is both understandable and forgivable. Indeed they all had separate lives before they got 'bundled' in the 'MS Office' branding/suite. However, the primary reason I use and recommend MS Office over all the 'Office' style wannabees is solely down to the power of VBA to automate the apps (both internally and between each other - say SQL Server to MS Access, MS Access to Excel etc). Without this ability I may as well save the cash and use an inferior, but adequate and wholesomely cheaper alternative. VBA *IS* what adds the value to MS Office for me. As you say, I can understand if VBA is not up to the task of cloud computing requirement and security, but why not implement VB.NET or javascript or something?? Cheers Darryl. -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Mark Simms Sent: Tuesday, 15 July 2014 6:23 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: Re: [AccessD] Somewhat OT: Satya Nadella's memo. Starting FY15 - Bold Ambition & Our Core What a load of B.S.: Talk's cheap. I'd get a TON of STUFF DONE if the VBA object model and GUI Controls were consistent across all components of the Office Platform. But they are not and likely never will be. And will they ever get the cloud versions automated ? I don't care if it's Javascript or a whole new scripting language....JUST DO IT. -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com