Newbie: Should I learn C #, VB.Net or VBA / VB for excel programming?

Question

My background: mainly programming in C. I have (very recently ... the last 2 months) acquired JAVA skills (beginner). All my limited experience is based on development for Linux.

I would like to make some preliminary programs for work. My main interest is to start creating “dashboards” and charts / reports from Excel sheets, as I am tired of updating many sheets manually. I am lazy, so I like to automate wherever I can :-)

Which of these "new" languages ​​(for me) would you recommend learning? I also hope that if / when I become more familiar with the Windows / MS Office environment, I can do more “powerful” things.

Answer 1

If your main goal is to optimize Excel tasks, then VBA is the language you need to learn.

It’s good that if you have any kind of software background, the learning curve is extremely simple.

Just run Record Macro, complete the task, and then look at the code that was generated. You have a working example to learn.

Answer 2

I personally prefer C # as a language, but in terms of released versions, VB.NET is the best language to use with Interop. C # 4 improved this situation, though, with named arguments and optional parameters, the ref argument is falsification and COM PIA binding.

# 4, - , VB.NET.

Answer 3

excel, VBA. , .NET, , VB.NET.

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Answer 4

Java C, # . # , .

Answer 5

, , . , Microsoft VBA, , , Visual Studio Tools for Office ; , VB.NET # ( - ) , VBA.

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Answer 6

Microsoft VBA . , Mac Office 2008. Windows, .

Seeing that you have knowledge of C and Java, and considering that you are starting fresh, I would definitely go with .NET. These are simply the best investments for your time.

As John Skeet says, C # (4.0) is probably the best option if you are not opposed to using beta software.