• (nodebb)

    Some time later, Bert found out that the client had wanted to stop paying for custom software solutions

    So it was all a set-up in the first place. Perhaps the client learned that if you want to stop paying for external ("third-party") developers to build custom software solutions, you probably need to pay for internal developers(1) to build custom software solutions.

    Paying for the next step is more necessary but less obvious, but was, nonetheless, learned for the first time more than 50 years ago. The next step, of course, is morphing your business processes so they are easy to automate with off-the-shelf (non-custom) software solutions.

    (1) And here, I do not mean "repurposed very-junior accountants", but actual developers.

  • (nodebb)

    :(

  • Pag (unregistered)

    Surely an accountant would know that a computer can add two numbers together?

  • HO (unregistered)

    It is stories like this (and I have seen many first hand) of people with no 'IT' knowledge, that start with Excel (booh!, see first parenthesis, it is always Excel), then formulas, then copy paste VBA from the 'net, banging on it until it works... And then people, like here on TDWTF, sees it and conflates it with VB.NET (or VB6), and proclaims "VB bad".

  • (nodebb)

    It is stories like this (and I have seen many first hand) of people with no 'IT' knowledge, that start with Excel (booh!, see first parenthesis, it is always Excel), then formulas, then copy paste VBA from the 'net, banging on it until it works... And then people, like here on TDWTF, sees it and conflates it with VB.NET (or VB6), and proclaims "VB bad".

  • (nodebb) in reply to HXO

    Yes, but ... Don't forget that the Excel path has a very low barrier to entry(1) followed by (relatively) low barriers(1) in the progression you describe, even if the barriers to "writing a good(2) system well" remain fairly high.

    (1) Note that I'm talking here about the mostest basickest level of entry, to get something kinda sorta working, provided that the user wears yellow socks on every Tuesday, and only on Tuesdays and only scratches his nose when facing north-by-northwest.

    (2) Even just "good enough to not really rate being on TDWTF".

  • (nodebb)

    I think Bert's solution was brilliant (note two 'I').

    He got in a bunch of billable time, nominally achieved the project goals, AND got the "program" abandoned.

    Win-win-win, great job Bert!

  • Duke of New York (unregistered)

    So they outsourced to AI (accounting intern).

  • p (unregistered) in reply to HXO

    VBA and VB6 are the same language and use the same IDE.

  • Klimax (unregistered) in reply to Steve_The_Cynic

    I don't think it was setup (no ongoing contract; I initially misread it that way too.). They just wanted to do app in-house and chose wrong person to do it.

  • (nodebb)

    I've encountered a few Excel-VBA solutions in my time (written a few too, but not for deployment to anyone else unless they were fixing a demonstrably worse WTF solution like replaying an recorded Excel macro that relied on just a few too many assumptions about the input conditions, and even then no money changed hands and documented the solution). You know what's worse than Excel VBA solutions written by people who don't understand software development? Excel VBA solutions that are written by people who /do/ understand, but go out of their way to obfuscate their software solution to be unmaintainable by anyone else, sell them to paying customers, and then move on because supporting those customers is borrrrrr-ing.

  • Argle (unregistered)

    I desperately wish I had the kind of money people spend on "inexpensive" programmers.

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