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End of life software running on top of end of life software. Hard to hire for this stack, especially anyone who cares about tech. Security and maintenance night
by romanhn 1y ago
End of life software running on top of end of life software. Hard to hire for this stack, especially anyone who cares about tech. Security and maintenance nightmare. Interoperability is a pain. Questionable documentation. It all works until it doesn't, and then you're in the world of pain.
- jackvalentine 1y agoA client of mine used Visual Foxpro for… way past its used by date, for a crucial database in a crucial aspect of a crucial industry. When it inevitably failed spectacularly they struggled to get anyone who knew what was up to intervene. Same client kept poor backups. Recently persuaded said client looking for a new solution to support a new line of business to go with the .NET, actively developed system over the ‘free’ VB6 desktop application that a charity developed a billion years ago and wanders around the industry inflicting pain.
- potoooooooo 1y agoNot all of these issues apply to VBA, which the top level comment brought up,even if they apply to VB6 and the other ones you mentioned. VBA isn't EOL, and Excel certainly isn't. Lots of people are continually building sophisticated tools in MS Office even though it's not helpful for the resume because it's the path of least resistance for solving problems for the sorts of people who just learned VLOOKUP in 2021 and don't want to learn about XLOOKUP now. Security, maintenance, interop, documentation... There are arguments to be made. It's not cut and dry that VBA is the worst option for any of those. The patterns for handling them are different than a web app repo or something, but it's not like they don't get thought of and handled on a daily basis.