How hard is computer programming / how do I go about it?

[mrsurrey]

Hello,

I've created lots of mysql/php websites using relational databases and I'm happy I can scale them pretty much infinitely. I'm wondering how much harder it is to create computer programs (for Microsoft operating systems)....

I have a very strange burning desire - I want to write a computer program that addresses all the shortcomings of Pivot Tables in Excel, for a particular niche that I work in. Basically it will be like a Microsoft Excel workbook with a Pivot Table - one sheet holds the table of data, and the other sheet holds the Pivot Table.

So how hard do you think it would be? And what computer language should I use?

Thanks,

MrS

[JeroenC]

Does VBA - Visual Basic for Applications, built in Excel, not give you enough options?

[ExGrunt]

Mrs S,

I agree with Jeroen: if you want to output to Excel then VBA is probably the right tool. It is built in to excel and the programming interface is accessed by pressing alt+F11.

For your needs I suggest you look at custom functions rather than subroutines.

Subroutines are either run from the macro menu or by keyboard short cut. Custom functions can be entered into cells like the built in functions. I have used them to create data queries.

If you have the data in excel already oftem you can often achieve better results than pivot tables with a combination of INDEX, MATCH, SUMIF and MMULT.

HTH

EG

[dazdaz1]

mrsurry........COBAL is the way to go, big revival according to the net. Thing is a 'compiler' = to machine code can cost big bucks.

[mrsurrey]

VBA is a very inefficient solution - it takes a long time to implement a complex solution (often an extra employee to code and maintain), it's unstable, inelegant (needs lots of workarounds), prone to programmer error, hard to hand over code during staff turnover.

And pivot tables are hard to adjust for people not familiar with excel and the format isn't flexible enough to make a presentation 'clean' enough for management consumption. And there are technical bugs with calculated fields and calculated items that I won't bore you with.

So please humour me :-) how do I go about this?

I think the consensus is that the best coders are young (according to gates/jobs/zucerburg) so surely that suggest that it just takes 1-2 years worth of programming knowledge and then a whole load of motivation? I just need pointing in the right direction...

Thanks,

MrS

p.s. thanks Daz I'll give COBAL a look

[TWT]

COBOL ;) mmmmmm

[Mac the Knife]

Write a program to get a date (and parse it correctly) in a lower level language (no get_date modules/libraries).

Do it in COBOL, GW-Basic, FORTH, FORTRAN, C (not++), PROLOG, Ada, Lisp, Smalltalk, DBase, and Haskell.

Make it intelligent - sensible responses to unexpected input

"January has only 31 days - what planet are you from?"
"2014 isn't a leap year so it can't be 29th February!"
"Are you sure you want to set the date for this event 4234 years into the future?"
"That was the day before yesterday!"
"1342? Now we're back in the Middle Ages! [BTW, Louis I was crowned King of Hungary on July 16th]"

That is the real future - even the basic get module is harder than you would think to write from complete scratch.

Not that hard to write a quick-and-dirty but making it elegant and economical is a real challenge.

Mac

:ok:

PS: This will drive you insane because the intelligence, knowledge and humour built into the program is infinite - but it's fun to make a start!

See you in 4 years.

;)

[Saab Dastard]

A lesson I learned a long time ago, when studying civil engineering in University, was to break an engineering programming task down into 3 phases:

understanding and stating the actual problem and solution in as simple English / mathematical terms as possible;
developing high-level pseudo-code algorithms to model the solution;
finally, writing code in whatever specific language was available / mandated / chosen.

This may seem bleeding obvious to many, but at the time it was a major insight, as I had been confusing the how with the what, why and with which up to that point.

Getting halfway decent and presentable output in FORTRAN IV was still a bugger, ISTR. BASIC was a bit easier if access to a PC was available (I am talking 80's here!)

SD

[vulcanised]

Aaaaaah. I used to be fairly fluent in BASIC.

I miss all the PEEKing and POKEing.

[seacue]

Not accommodating all the "what if?" s can be the downfall of software.

I was nearly ready to submit my income tax filing when I discovered that the most-commonly-used preparation software had ignored one of the sub-forms. It took me a long time to find that I had made the error of calling it sub-form "1" (one) rather than "01" (zero one). The software wasn't smart enough to handle this. I haven't used that brand of software since then.