I'm pretty good at VBA, I'd say. (NO, that doesn't mean I can just record macros! but that's a different story.) As much as I like VBA for what I can do with it, people - other programmers in particular - seem to think VBA is the red-headed step-child or black sheep of languages. Perhaps I should look into something else?
I get it: VBA is not a highly revered or esteemed tool. To work alongside VBA (and by itself), I've learned SQL, but that's not that much to add. If I want to do something with myself in the world of programming, I need some other skills in my repertoire. In fact, I've known this for a while, and have picked up bits and pieces of more 'standard' languages over time. I've made an incomplete project at SourceForge, working first in C++, then Java, but I've also looked into VBScript, Perl, JavaScript, though I am not an expert at any.
Recently, I've really started digging into Python at CodeAcademy, and I must say I really enjoy it. This is much more true than C++ or Java, because Python just seems to make everything else much simpler. Not only have I been fairly quick to learn, but I'm finding it can do so much more than VBA. I can actually (potentially) produce something useful outside of MSFT Office!
I've worked through about 25 problems on Project Euler (not quite 25 yet) and most were completed in VBA. However, now that I'm more comfortable with Python, I took a whack at some of those I previously had completed as well as some new problems. Turns out, the code not only was much simpler to produce, but it also worked about 1,000 times faster. (Ok, I made that up, no real benchmarking was done, but you really can see a difference.)
While I've yet to produce many responses in Python, the language often does pretty well on a number of challenges on CodeGolf.SE.
I've still got some learning to do, but I'm excited to try something more significant in the coming months using Python!
