Re: Word 2003 VB IDE & VB2005


"Perry" <drumper@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:3EE6F411-FD61-4C8B-B040-2DC81D12DB56@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I'm trying a trial of Office 2007 and the VBA ide is VB 6.5
am I missing something here?
Nope, correctomundo

If MS is migrating to VB.NET then why the
release of 2007 with VB 6.5?
Only InfoPath 2007 ships with VB.net IDE.
I hope VB.net IDE will ship with SR1 or SR2 of Office 2007.

No chance. That kind of additional feature has never shipped in a service pack before. VB.NET syntax can't easily be grafted into the internal layout of templates to replace VBA for reasons of backwards compatibility, and the VB.NET IDE can't be made available with VBA as the language being edited, unless the underlying code for the editor were fundamentally changed. That is because the Visual Studio.NET IDE makes certain assumptions concerning the syntax of the languages it supports, and VBA doesn't conform to certain of those assumptions.


I've noticed some apprehension among VBA expert colleagues here in Holland.

Justifiably in my view

I'm trying to convince them into investing in VB.net. My message is finally getting through to
them but only after having showed them apps I developed and demonstrating the richness of the IDE.

The IDE is just one aspect of productivity. Another is performance of the completed application, another is the time and effort necessary to create a deployment package. A further aspect is the extent to which the IDE is integrated into the object model of the application you are automating.


From what I understand (and it's not a lot) VB.NET or VS2005 are external
from Office and VB 6.5 is internal or attached directly to the individual
program (i.e. Word, Excel, Access etc.)
Strike!

I also, apparently, grasp that it is safe to learn VB 6.5 for Office
as a tool for creating small solutions for clients (is this true?)
True.
But, think about:
Ok, as a beginner you would need to invest in VBA 6.5 all the same, right?

VBA is not going to disappear any time soon, unless Microsoft is going to commit financial suicide by kissing goodbye to about a third of its revenue.

Why not use the effort to learn VB.net from scratch, I wonder?

The principles involved in programming are much the same, and sound programming techniques can be taught and learned in any language.

As a beginner, it will take some effort (courses, courses and courses) but if you have some affinity with programming
and your MS Word knowledge (I mean power user knowledge and not programming knowledge) is good, why not skip the VBA 6.5 step
and jump right into VB.net?

I know of one community college which made the jump from doing a programming course in VB6 to VB.NET, found themselves after a year with radically reduced student numbers and declining pass-rates, and have changed tack and now base the course on VBA using Word, Excel and Access.

I'm not suggesting that VB2005 is inappropriate for any programming task. However, I think it is equally incorrect to write off VBA as inappropriate because of its supposed outdatedness.


--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk
Please reply to the newsgroup
Keep your VBA code safe, sign the ClassicVB petition www.classicvb.org

.

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