A curse on Bill Gates....! 2

[jmw]

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)


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[electricpete]

lol. Sounds familiar. Thanks for sharing your pain so others might not repeat it.

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[flash3780]

My Windoze XP machine at work crashes routinely... I've switched to Linux for just about everything but email (we're on an MS Exchange server).

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.

 

[GregLocock]

Odd, my XP machines (I run 4) crash once every 3 months or probably less frequently. Perhaps yours are maintained by incompetent buffoons. Which is sad, since 3 of the ones I'm talking about are my home machines.

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


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[IRstuff]

While I am sympathetic to your pain, VB express just wasn't that difficult to find and install. 33MB back in 2007. The entire Visual Studio Express disk image was 916MB when I downloaded in 2008

The latest Visual Studio Express appears to be available from:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/#2010-All

693MB. If the format remains the same as the older versions, you should be able to install VB Express by itself. You'll have to burn the ISO image to a DVD, and then you can run the installation stand-alone.

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[jmw]

Thanks for the sympathy guys and yes my computer is managed by a buffoon (me) etc etc.
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

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[flash3780]

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?

I shouldn't lampoon Microsoft. In many cases, they make quite good products. What I was getting at when speaking of security is separating users from administrators. Microsoft doesn't do that. There's a reason, of course, that they don't. Ease of use. Microsoft doesn't restrict changes to the system to root users because it requires a distinction between users and administrators to be made. Most home users have no intention of making such a distinction when purchasing a computer.

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.

 

[cowski]

What I was getting at when speaking of security is separating users from administrators. Microsoft doesn't do that.

Actually, they do. You can set up 'limited' accounts (user accounts) on the computer. If you only have 1 account (as most home users I've seen) it is by default the 'administrator' account. I've set up limited accounts for my young kids and password protected the 'admin' account so they don't accidentally delete anything they shouldn't. I have windows XP home edition, and have seen that the home editions of vista and win7 have the same feature.

 

[jmw]

Yet despite this, changes to the start menu receive a message about requiring administrator privileges to change it.... mind you, I'm using the wife's old PC while I shop around for a new motherboard for mine, so anything could be happening on it despite my having set it up with me as administrator.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[flash3780]

You can set up 'limited' accounts (user accounts) on the computer.

That's good, and thanks for the correction. Yes, they do offer the option of securely maintaining your computer on all Windows NT derived operating systems. Kudos for smartly setting up your home computer system. A strong password on your administrator account will go a long way towards securing your computer from all sorts of threats.

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

 

[KiwiMace]

I thought Vista was MS's attempt at enforcing administrator rights onto every pitiful little action, they backed it off on Win7 as it was almost unusable.

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.

 

[IRstuff]

The download link I posted is for a complete DVD image of the Visual Studio Express install disk, but it includes all 4 VSExpress products.

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[flash3780]

I thought Vista was MS's attempt at enforcing administrator rights onto every pitiful little action, they backed it off on Win7 as it was almost unusable.

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.

 

[djs]

You might be out of luck using the express version with Excel. I believe that the express versions have the necessary links to office products removed. Incentive to purchase or upgrade.

 

[IDS]

It is possible to link Excel to Visual Studio Express compilers.

Instructions for C++ here:

http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/linking-excel-to-c/

Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services

http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/

 

[flash3780]

It is possible to link Excel to Visual Studio Express compilers.

Wow, blog post/link. Star from me.

 

[Enginerd9]

Maybe I'm missing something...

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

http://www.vbaexpress.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=4

With a little ingenuity, Excel / VBA can pretty much tackle any reasonable problem.

 

[IDS]

Enginerd9 - it makes a pleasant change to see someone (other than me) write in support of VBA. It somehow seems to have become "conventional wisdom" that VBA is the font of all evil, and should be avoided at all costs. That makes no sense at all to me. It seems to me that a spreadsheet + built-in programming support where required is the most efficient solution to about 90% of engineering analysis problems, and Excel + VBA remains the best choice of the available spreadsheets.

Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services

http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/

 

[Denial]

I strongly agree with the comments by Enginerd9 and IDS.

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.

 

[flash3780]

Nothing wrong with VBA, and I agree that the unified environment is desirable. However, if there is difficulty compiling VBA programs, there are alternatives out there. That's all I was getting at.

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.