From: Charles D Hixson <charleshixsn@...>
Date: 2006-11-21T09:40:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby vs Java vs c++

David Kastrup wrote:
> spooq <spoooq@gmail.com> writes:
>
>   
>> I would like to suggest the newbie learns VBA. The financial world
>> lives and breathes Excel. VBA is by far the language most likely to be
>> of use to someone entering that world. It's pretty clear programming
>> is a tool for his/her use, rather than something that (s)he wants to
>> do for it's own sake. Having said that, Excel can be viewed as a type
>> of DSL in it's own right, so pushing the boundaries of what can be
>> done 'natively' is a great place to start.
>>     
>
> Isn't VBA rather similar to Ruby, anyway?
>
>   
I stopped using VBA after I caught it making arithmetic mistakes.  Not 
rounding errors, outright mistakes.  Now granted this was over 5 years 
ago now, and they MAY have improved things...but I wouldn't trust it any 
more.  I actually rewrote things to use Excel macros to avoid doing 
arithmetic in VBA.  I never did figure out under what circumstances it 
would do this, but ever since then I've had an extreme distrust of 
everything programmed in MSOffice.  I figure that Excel macros are 
probably safe...because there would be so many eyes looking at them.  
But I'm not sure.  I never heard anyone else saying that they had caught 
VBA (actually basic for MSAccess2000) in an arithmetic error, but I 
definitely did.  The numbers were small enough that a third grader would 
have seen the error, and there wasn't ANYTHING subtle about the program.

IS it similar to Ruby?  I sure hope not.