Re: [Fsfe-uk] Newham: Richard Steel speaks (Techworld)

[Alex Hudson]

On Mon, 2004-01-26 at 00:40, MJ Ray wrote:
> > What portable macros? I don't know of any such solution. VBA [...]
> 
> Some software has portable macros and some Excel macros used to be 
> readable by other spreadsheets

Ah, we're talking at cross-purposes. Yes, Excel does have macros that
are usable in other software - Gnumeric is particularly excellent, in
that it supports all the functions (and more) that Excel implements. 

No, when Newham or others talk about the difficulty of porting their
macro applications they're talking about VBA. They're talking about
applications written in Basic on top of the Office APIs. These can be
really ten-a-penny in some businesses: if you have someone who knows a
bit of Access, for example, you find that their contact management will
be done in it, their stock lists, all sorts of things. These things can
be exceptionally complex.

> > Office comes #5 in CW's top contract skills
> > by demand, and #8 in top perm skills (#9 is VB, and I would say that 
> > the set of "Office AND VB" is probably a significant size).
> 
> I don't doubt you, but it would make me happier to have a proper 
> reference for claims like this.

I'm not sure there is anyone measuring this kind of thing, beyond the
likes of CW monitoring advertisements, etc. In a lot of ways, it would
be interesting information to know - I'd also like to know whether or
not there are more Windows programmers than people working on web
applications - but you'd have to look at people already in work, and I
know the labour force survey will not go into that kind of detail.

Cheers,

Alex.