Of Ducks and VBA

RubberDuck

Sep 3, 2015 00:37

Man... After reading this all... The story of CR really is an underdog story. I love it. In that theme, I'll have to return and tell a story about a lonely reviewer and his favorite tag.

5

rolfl

cobol?

RubberDuck

Lol. No, this one has a relatively healthy community now.

Mat's Mug

the story of the vba tag?

RubberDuck

Which is really just the story of CR in miniature.

Mat's Mug

lol, indeed!

RubberDuck

Sep 3, 2015 00:41

Truly, it is.

Zak

see, now I'm intrigued

RubberDuck

Once upon a time, there was a Mug who ~~abused~~ wrote lots of VBA.

Mat's Mug

nah, abused is correct :)

Hosch250

I should say so.

RubberDuck

But there wasn't really anyone around to review his work. Oh, sure, he got reviews, but often, he resorted to doing it himself.

2

There were lots of selfies those days.

Hosch250

Sep 3, 2015 00:44

Hey, is this ~~Mother Goose~~ Daddy Duck telling a story?

3

Mat's Mug

grabs popcorn

RubberDuck

He basically was the vba community here.

Then, one fateful day, a lonely programmer wandered into town, looking for assistance.

10

Q: My code is too long. How do I trim it down when code posted here is expected to function?

The code I would like to have reviewed, found here, is more than 30,000 characters long. I don't feel like that in and of itself makes it off topic, but removing code from it so that it can be posted here WILL make it off topic, because it will no longer function. I've read How long is long code...

Yes. My first question here was a VBA class too long to actually post.

2

I'm both proud and ashamed of that fact.

Anyway, I got more and better feedback than I ever got from my colleagues at work. I was hooked.

Mug invited me to the 2nd Monitor where I met the already thriving community.

But the tag was dead quiet other than the two of us, reviewing each other's attempts to write something not awful in a "dying" language.

Hosch250

And Rubberduck was born.

RubberDuck

Not quite yet.

And this is only partly the story of Rubberduck.

Hosch250

But Rubberduck comes into the story, doesn't it?

RubberDuck

Sep 3, 2015 00:50

First, we more or less moved all of our VBA chatter into another room.

Mat's Mug

@Hosch250 eventually

RubberDuck

Lol. Of course it does @Hosch250.

The chat room was first. This was the first real "splinter" of the 2nd Monitor IIRC.

Mat's Mug

the first focus (as far as I'm concerned), was to get the tag to 100 on-topic questions, to get vba into the "big league" of "real tags"... and earn a tag badge or two along the way

SirPython

Hmm. There's quite a lot of dialogue in this story.

RubberDuck

You've no idea...

Mat's Mug

Sep 3, 2015 00:53

in The 2nd Monitor, 4 mins ago, by Zak

for anyone who's interested, @RubberDuck is telling a story in http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/27598/the-cronicles

RubberDuck

We started that chatroom over a year ago. It's only been frozen once.

Mat's Mug

VBA's been frozen? I don't even recall...

RubberDuck

Yeah. @rolfl had to unfreeze it for us.

Hosch250

in VBA Rubberducking, Jul 26 '14 at 22:25, by Feeds

This room has been automatically frozen for inactivity

Mat's Mug

oh wow

Hosch250

Sep 3, 2015 00:54

in VBA Rubberducking, Oct 9 '14 at 16:41, by Stack Exchange

rolfl has unfrozen this room.

RubberDuck

We were chattering about how to unit test VBA, but it was early on.

Mat's Mug

that's... a rather long freeze...

RubberDuck

October is when Rubberduck was born in earnest.

But that's not what I want to talk about...

We added the tag feeds to the room and started inviting the SO regulars over.

Mat's Mug

and @vba4all showed up

RubberDuck

Yeah. I got to meet the guy who taught me OOP.

Turns out, famous people are just regular folks kids.

So, this chatroom brought over a number of users from SO that had never participated here before.

Hosch250

Sep 3, 2015 00:59

in VBA Rubberducking, Oct 13 '14 at 23:52, by RubberDuck

I'm going to rename this room "Abusing VBA like a red headed step child"

RubberDuck

Long story short, the tag went from having one dedicated reviewer, to two, to a community, all revolving around a chatroom.

Like I said, it's the story of CR in miniature.

Mat's Mug

I've seen @FreeMan once or twice in The 2nd Monitor, but almost every day for the longest while in the VBA room

RubberDuck

I've been absent since I started my new job.

I suppose that's part of this story too though.

Hosch250

I suppose I come in eventually.

RubberDuck

CR spawned an open source project that is responsible (at least in part) for me getting that new job.

3

Yes. You've been fantastic @Hosch250. How did you make your way into our chatroom anyway?

Hosch250

Sep 3, 2015 01:02

First, I found the 2nd Monitor.

RubberDuck

Passes the talking stick

Hosch250

I learned about the chat system while I was active at PPCG.

I was on their meta, and the chat rooms come up on the side, you know.

Then, I went to WPF on SO, and when I became active on CR, I came to the chatroom pretty quickly.

So, you guys were talking about RD, and I was busy on my app, but I visited and bug tested a couple things for you guys.

Then, I gave out on my app. I needed something more challenging, so I started working on RD.

And boy, was that a good decision.

RubberDuck

Lol. Yeah. Challenging is right.

Hosch250

Passes talking stick back

RubberDuck

So, wait. You got involved because we were chattering in the wrong room? Lol. That's awesome.

Hosch250

Sep 3, 2015 01:06

Yup.

I've not been so active since 1.4 was released and I did all the unit tests.

Mat's Mug

@RubberDuck I was just look at some transcripts. turns out [badge:vba] and CR's graduation are connected:

in The 2nd Monitor, Sep 29 '14 at 19:25, by RubberDuck

Hey @Mat'sMug, a vba badge and graduation announcement on the same day, coincidence, I think not.

Hosch250

I did a framework with unit tests for regex testing, but I've really not been active since @Mat'sMug took over cleaning up the context menus.

I went to work on VSDiagnostics then.

RubberDuck

So, anyway. There's not much to tell about the VBA tag. Lots of great CRitters have passed through. Ptwales, BlackHawk, vba4all, freeman, enderland...

2

Hosch250

And now I'm not working on anything except college (and I'm not doing that at the moment either).

RubberDuck

And now @Zak. =;)-

Zak

Sep 3, 2015 01:08

*waves

Hosch250

@Zak o/

RubberDuck

Oh! Right! VSDiagnostics. There's another "community" project.

Zak

I know how I got involved :)

in The 2nd Monitor, Aug 21 at 9:31, by Zak

Hi. I have no idea where I am or how I got here :) can anybody help?

Mat's Mug

@Zak lol

Zak

/i don't remember how I got to Cr in the first place

I had no idea there even was chat functionality on SE

Mat's Mug

Sep 3, 2015 01:11

probably clicked a hot network question in the sidebar on SO

2

Jeroen Vannevel

@RubberDuck the only one that matters

Zak

but I was hooked almost immediately

Mat's Mug

@Zak I know the feeling :)

Hosch250

I joined CR when I was learning about multithreading in college.

(Or rather, I became active then.)

RubberDuck

So, now that the community is here, we need to keep it healthy

2

Zak

Sep 3, 2015 01:14

It's only been a fortnight but I already feel like a part of this community, I feel proud of it, I feel protective. And I've learnt far more here in 2 weeks than a whole year of google and textbooks and abusing VBA :)

3

Hosch250

@Zak I know the feeling.

@RubberDuck Does that mean we all need to go kill a zombie?

Zak

@Hosch250 there are no zombies in vba

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