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Excel macros were/are bad as a programming environment, for the reasons Joel says. The thing is, that's because it grew out of the deficiencies of formulae. I

Excel macros were/are bad as a programming environment, for the reasons Joel says. The thing is, that's because it grew out of the deficiencies of formulae. If you can't do a thing with formulae, the next logical step was a macro. Since Excel was such widely distributed software back then, and it took actual effort to get decent tools for programming, macros were a lot of folks' first exposure to programming. In turn, that means there are people who can perform what I'd consider pure wizardry with them. My hat is off to those people, though I still am happier that I got my hands on Turbo Pascal at the right age.

filoleg 4y ago
Oh hey, another turbo pascal starter. If you don't mind, can you elaborate on why you feel that way about it? In retrospective, I am happy about starting with it, and remember it fondly. But I cannot really make any good point for why, and I definitely remember cursing it out very hard at the time.
- amalcon 4y ago
  Basically two things: 1. It was better than the other stuff I had access to at the time. This is due more to the poor quality of the other stuff I had access to at the time than any benefit of Turbo Pascal, but it still mattered. 2. There are pointers in it, but you aren't forced to use them for simple programs. Having encountered pointers early is a huge leg up when it comes time to work with something like C or assembler. Being forced to use them (as in C) makes the learning curve really steep. Something like Pascal, where you have pointers but you aren't forced to use them for the sorts of program a beginner will tend to write, seems to give both benefits.
  - unwind 4y ago
    I learned C after years of first Basic, then MC68k assembler (Amiga 4ever etc). Pointers never seemed hard or confusing at all. :) #lifehack
  - DanielHB 4y ago
    as someone who started out with turbo pascal I totally agree with this but I have to add an extra point that turbo pascal is an IDE you press F9 (I think?) and it runs your freaking code, press F8 (I think?) and you have a line-stepping debugger I started learning programming in 2003 in turbo pascal, already very outdated at the time. But it is still probably the most pragmatic choice for teaching pointer-based programming (it should be a crime to teach data structures in a language that doesn't have manual memory management)
Tangurena2 4y ago
Many times "it" started as one worker in the office who needed to get something done. And they figured out that Excel (or Access) could do "that thing". So they used Excel to automate it. Then "that thing" ended up doing more, and getting more complicated, until one day people realize that the company depends on this (now) business critical process. Excel was more likely because it came in almost every version of Microsoft Office. Access tended to come in only the more expensive suites. That's why I call Excel & Access "gateway drugs" - they're the tool that got a lot of people into programming. They didn't wake up one morning and say "hey, I want to be a programmer!". Instead they figured out how to do their work with the tools they had, and then one day woke up and realized "OMG! I've become a programmer without noticing."

filoleg 4y ago

Oh hey, another turbo pascal starter. If you don't mind, can you elaborate on why you feel that way about it? In retrospective, I am happy about starting with it, and remember it fondly. But I cannot really make any good point for why, and I definitely remember cursing it out very hard at the time.

amalcon 4y ago
Basically two things: 1. It was better than the other stuff I had access to at the time. This is due more to the poor quality of the other stuff I had access to at the time than any benefit of Turbo Pascal, but it still mattered. 2. There are pointers in it, but you aren't forced to use them for simple programs. Having encountered pointers early is a huge leg up when it comes time to work with something like C or assembler. Being forced to use them (as in C) makes the learning curve really steep. Something like Pascal, where you have pointers but you aren't forced to use them for the sorts of program a beginner will tend to write, seems to give both benefits.
- unwind 4y ago
  I learned C after years of first Basic, then MC68k assembler (Amiga 4ever etc). Pointers never seemed hard or confusing at all. :) #lifehack
- DanielHB 4y ago
  as someone who started out with turbo pascal I totally agree with this but I have to add an extra point that turbo pascal is an IDE you press F9 (I think?) and it runs your freaking code, press F8 (I think?) and you have a line-stepping debugger I started learning programming in 2003 in turbo pascal, already very outdated at the time. But it is still probably the most pragmatic choice for teaching pointer-based programming (it should be a crime to teach data structures in a language that doesn't have manual memory management)

Tangurena2 4y ago

Many times "it" started as one worker in the office who needed to get something done. And they figured out that Excel (or Access) could do "that thing". So they used Excel to automate it. Then "that thing" ended up doing more, and getting more complicated, until one day people realize that the company depends on this (now) business critical process. Excel was more likely because it came in almost every version of Microsoft Office. Access tended to come in only the more expensive suites. That's why I call Excel & Access "gateway drugs" - they're the tool that got a lot of people into programming. They didn't wake up one morning and say "hey, I want to be a programmer!". Instead they figured out how to do their work with the tools they had, and then one day woke up and realized "OMG! I've become a programmer without noticing."