A curse on Bill Gates....!
A curse on Bill Gates....!
(OP)
Following a comment in another thread of mine, I finally decided it was time to play with Visual Basic again.
Rather than simply update my Excel Spreadsheets, I thought I might turn them into proper applications...
The last time I used Visual Basic was years ago and it was always hit and miss because the company had a limited number of licences and when I finally did get a break in the chain so I could use it I'd get bumped again pretty quick.
Then I discovered that Microsoft offer the express version free.
Take it from me, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
It came packaged in Visual Studio (for some reason following a visual basic on an MS site leads to this conclusion) which required some other damn application downloaded first (Web Developer Installer or something) and being MS it downloaded tons of stuff I didn't think I needed and then came up with an install failure message, something about the SQL data base something or other file already existing (why not just overwrite liek every sensible program on the planet?).
It then took me half a day to uninstall some of this junk (a failed install where you can't re-install over the top usually means the uninstaller won't work properly either) and about when I am ready to do a system restore I suddenly get some control back.
But I now have all sorts of new Net files and exes, Silverlight in various versions and god knows what else installed, useless and seemingly uninstallable...
Also it was the wrong thing to install in the first place.
That'll teach me not to use the MS web sites because MS lead me from Visual basic to installing this garbage.
I had to go to an independent web site to find a link to the right download, Visual Basic 2010 Express. (which installed easily)
Now if anyone knows what all the bits are that MS installed and what I should now delete before turning lose CC cleaner, please let me know.
(The omens aren't good for me not to crash my computer a few times with VB6)
Rather than simply update my Excel Spreadsheets, I thought I might turn them into proper applications...
The last time I used Visual Basic was years ago and it was always hit and miss because the company had a limited number of licences and when I finally did get a break in the chain so I could use it I'd get bumped again pretty quick.
Then I discovered that Microsoft offer the express version free.
Take it from me, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
It came packaged in Visual Studio (for some reason following a visual basic on an MS site leads to this conclusion) which required some other damn application downloaded first (Web Developer Installer or something) and being MS it downloaded tons of stuff I didn't think I needed and then came up with an install failure message, something about the SQL data base something or other file already existing (why not just overwrite liek every sensible program on the planet?).
It then took me half a day to uninstall some of this junk (a failed install where you can't re-install over the top usually means the uninstaller won't work properly either) and about when I am ready to do a system restore I suddenly get some control back.
But I now have all sorts of new Net files and exes, Silverlight in various versions and god knows what else installed, useless and seemingly uninstallable...
Also it was the wrong thing to install in the first place.
That'll teach me not to use the MS web sites because MS lead me from Visual basic to installing this garbage.
I had to go to an independent web site to find a link to the right download, Visual Basic 2010 Express. (which installed easily)
Now if anyone knows what all the bits are that MS installed and what I should now delete before turning lose CC cleaner, please let me know.
(The omens aren't good for me not to crash my computer a few times with VB6)





RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
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(2B)+(2B)' ?
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
Microsoft isn't all bad, though. Excel is darn a darn good spreadsheet program. MS Office, in general, is good software.
My biggest problem with Micro-soft is the lack of security. If you've used Linux you know that you have to have root privileges to make changes to a computer. Makes sense.
Windoze, on the other hand, will let anybody from your kid sister to a hacker in Kerplunkistan install stuff that you might not want on your computer. And then, to deal with the associated vulnerabilities, they suggest that you run resource crushing anti-virus programs. On top of that, they operating system itself requires more-and-more oomph just to boot up and sit there idle.
Is it a nice feature to be able to install things on the fly? Sure, it can be handy. Is it worth the security risk? I don't think so, but Microsoft seems to.
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
So far a security goes, sadly yours must be /used/ by incompetent buffoons, since I don't get virrii on mine. At the moment this machine is running some bulletproof AV software and yet its CPU usage is less than 1%. perhaps your AV programs were installed by incompetent buffoons?
Not that I'm anti linux, it is a sensible OS that I use frequently. But Linux users, give me a break...
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
The latest Visual Studio Express appears to be available from: ht
TTFN
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RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
I run MacAfee security because its free from my ISP and it certainly has the memory guzzling CPU saturation levels that might be expected if I was running the planet.
IRStuff, well I googled Visual basic, found an MS site which offered it free, clicked a link and found myself on Elm Street with it as part of Visual Studio.
How massive it all is I didn't check, I just got alarmed that it was taking 90 minutes to do anything and then locked up.
As I say, I thne found an independent site which linked me to the VB2010 download and that went relatively quickly.
My problem is that VS had to be loaded by another download and loaded all sorts of things not requested. I can see some of it in program files but not in Add/remove programs. I moight try CC Cleaner and see if that is any good at removeing stuff.
The trouble with System restore is that while it may clean out the registry (i.e. reload an earlier version), it don't recall if it does any more than that.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
That's not to say that a separation between user privileges and administrative privileges isn't a good thing. Even if only one person is using the computer, it can prevent you from unintentionally deleting system files or prevent someone from breaking into your system from afar.
The resource usage of AV software will depend on the resources available on the machine that you're running it on. Big iron can handle a lot of background processes. Still, even if it's only 1%, that's 1% that I can use elsewhere on something productive.
Back to the original post, Matlab is an alternative to VBA for doing programming in Excel. Matlab programs can be compiled with the mcc compiler, and the xlsread/xlswrite functions pass data from Excel to Matlab, and then back the other way very well.
Unfortunately, Matlab costs a pretty penny. Octave is free and has much of the functionality of Matlab, but doesn't have a compiler. Scilab is also much like Matlab and I've seen a "Scilab 2 C" translator floating around out there, but I can't vouch for how well it works. If you can convert the code to C, plenty of free compilers exist out there.
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
Unfortunately, Windows operating systems don't enforce the distinction between users and administrators, and as you said, most users go merrily about running their machines as administrators. This is a conscious choice by Microsoft to increase usability. Features like ActiveX were designed with this in mind, which allow websites to install applications with little user intervention. If an administrator was required to download ActiveX content, the intent of delivering a "richer" (and consequently more proprietary) internet wouldn't be easily met.
In Unix and Unix-like operating systems (in general), the distinction between administrators and users is clear-cut. Hence, virus threats are much less of a concern to users (and hence administrators). Software repositories maintained by administrators also help ensure that installed programs are virus-free. Unix-based systems aren't immune to malicious software threats, but the risk is substantially diminished. Usually, to cause harm to a system, a malicious program must first gain root access.
More information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superuser
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
On the antiviral track.... I'm running Win 7, and apart from my general pleasure of using this OS, they let you download free the Microsoft Security Essentials. After years of hateful rampages over the performance of Norton and other antivirals - you hardly know this thing is installed.
This is the first time I have ever publicly recorded positive feedback on a MS product. It feels weird.
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
TTFN
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RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
Yeah, the implementation of UAP in Vista left something to be desired. I think that it lead to a bunch of people just turning it off. I haven't tried Win 7 yet, but I've read that they've actually gotten their act together. I'm just not willing to shell out $100 to upgrade.
As far as user interfaces go, the latest Windows and the latest Gnome interfaces are both really slick. The "snap" and "shake" features in the latest Windows seem great. I do prefer the clean look of the Gnome desktop, though. I use the heck out of the "multiple desktops" feature; I'd imagine that Windows will eventually implement something along those lines soon as well. I'm looking forward to Gnome 3 (which is available in beta).
Perhaps my concerns with Windows security are finally resolved with Windows 7. Eh... I'll try it out when I get around to it. I'm having good luck with Linux and don't have a need to swap.
Back to the original post... Ya know, there are a ton of free programming tools available for writing standalone applications. Glade (http://glade.gnome.org/) is a free GUI design tool that can be used with FreeBASIC, Python, Fortran, C++, etc. I haven't tried it, but it seems quite good.
Eclipse (http://eclipse.org/) looks like a very good integrated development environment. As far as I can tell, they seem to support Python, C/C++, Fortran, and Java.
Here is a neat video of Eclipse & Glade (using Java): http://people.redhat.com/overholt/nativeeclipse/
I rarely write programs that warrant being compiled into freestanding programs, but perhaps those would be of some use to you.
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
Instructions for C++ here:
http://
Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services
http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
I can use and run VBA just fine in my standard Excel install. So... is the point here that you just can't *compile* from the basic install?
You can write all the VBA code you want in your standard Excel install, but if you want to create a stand-alone program to perform the tasks you just wrote, you'll need the VBA Compiler... thing... Visual Studio.
What's the value in adding a translation step from Excel to MatLab(et al), then back to Excel, when Excel has such a strong foundation built by countless users who write things into it all the time? Here, check out some links I use on a regular basis:
http://groups.google.com/group/excel-vba
http://www.mrexcel.com/forum
ht
With a little ingenuity, Excel / VBA can pretty much tackle any reasonable problem.
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services
http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
If you are trying to write bullet-proof spreadsheets for use by unknown engineers (whose spreadsheeting and/or windows capabilities might not be all that flash) on unknown computers (whose OS and Excel versions might not be all that current), then keeping everything in the Excel/VBA environment usually pays dividends.
You might not always solve the problem the most elegant or efficient or intellectually satisfying way, but you will frequently save a heap on inelegant, inefficient, intellectually barren, post-deployment phone calls.
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
I've written Matlab GUI programs which read spreadsheet data, get user input, perform calculations, display the results, and write them back to the spreadsheet. It worked out just fine and the user didn't even have to open Excel. We ran into trouble with Excel being able to operate on large amounts of data so it was a bit of a workaround. Actually, I've heard that the newer version of Excel handles data better, so perhaps it's no longer even an issue. Still, I found that Matlab integrates with Excel quite well.
Really, it's just two different ways of cracking the same nut. If VBA and Matlab aren't your fancy, you could write a Python, Java, or C program to do the very same thing; it's nice that Glade, Eclipse, and numerous compilers which support those languages are available for free.
I was out of line to rail against Microsoft earlier in this thread; it's not helpful (I think I was frustrated with them at the time). I recognize that they do quite a bit of good work. However, if their software doesn't do what you need it to, there are a lot of great alternatives out there, many of them freely available. :)
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
I like how someone put it... using a sledge hammer as a fly swatter. MatLab might be a bit too powerful for something like a sorting algorythm, especially when Excel can do it so elegantly.
RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
So, given that you've got that many tools, why would you limit yourself to a single, or even just two, tools for what is ostensibly a much broader and more complex environment in engineering?
The more tools you are familiar with, the less likely it will be for you to try and misuse an incorrect tool because you'll know what the right tool is. Or, the less likely it will be that you'll be stuck without a paddle trying to beat your one tool into doing something that it simply cannot do.
I don't necessarily see any plus side for someone to boast that they use "XYZ" for "everything." Since XYZ must have some limits, an engineer that only uses XYZ also has limits. And, that's a BAD thing.
TTFN
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RE: A curse on Bill Gates....!
I think the thing to remember here is: right tool for the right job. Try unscrewing a wood screw with a hammer.
Nobody's saying "use Excel only, forget about the other packages!" We're simply saying, why make it more complicated than it needs to be? Why create computational overhead unless it's absolutely necessary?
The key is to use the right tool for the right job. Don't over do it, don't overcomplicate it. Keep it simple, keep it concise.