VBA Rubberducking

@puzzlepiece87 It's relatively simple. Tell us what your code does/is supposed to do. Give us a brief tour/overview of how it does it. Show us your code and ask for feedback.

Mat's Mug

6:06 PM

it's easy: we want to see your working code, preferably in its full glorious context (i.e. not just a little boiled-down snippet) - and then reviewers are free to comment on any/all aspects of the code

often a reviewee expected an answer that improved performance, and got answers pointing out edge cases and bugs they didn't even know existed

puzzlepiece87

I'll try to keep that in mind... It's hard for me to reflect back on what I did wrong because someone cleaned things up. I only see one question and no comments on that question in my CR history even though I am fairly sure there was at least two questions and I know that there were several comments telling me how to improve at least one of my questions.

Mat's Mug

let me check

puzzlepiece87

I am fairly sure I had an Excel-vba CR question too, I only see the SQL one. I think the SQL one came second and has cleaned up comments.

Mat's Mug

I see two answers and one question

puzzlepiece87

Got it. I am at least certain that someone cleaned up the comments for the question since I looked at the edit history and some of it is in response to the comments I'm remembering.

Mat's Mug

6:12 PM

yup, there are deleted moderator comments about improving the title

puzzlepiece87

Cool thanks, and thanks for the feedback on my answer!

Mat's Mug

no problem. BTW have you heard of rubberduck?

rubberduck-vba.com

puzzlepiece87

I have not

Mat's Mug

it's our little pet project. we want to make the VBE a better IDE :)

there's a number of known issues with the last release (v1.4.3), lots of which are fixed in the current build - we're just not ready to release 2.0 just yet.. but it's coming -- and it will hit hard

you've always wanted folders to organize your VBA project, didn't you?

puzzlepiece87

That's very impressive, just finished the features list

My favorite is the code inspections feature (and smart indent once 2.0 arrives) though the rest is a little too hardcore for me, as is the folders part

Mat's Mug

6:21 PM

:)

puzzlepiece87

And this is another reminder that I still have a ways to go before I am ready for the certification

Well, I take that back

The certification is too easy and I am ready for it

But there is still a ton of stuff I'd expect a vba contractor to know that I do not

I assume you all already saw ExlCom?

Mat's Mug

nope

puzzlepiece87

I can't link it from work but it's the first google result for ExlCom, it's a reddit post

Someone recreated X-Com Enemy Unknown in Excel using VBA

That's my other chief reminder at the moment of how far I have to go lol

Mat's Mug

check out this code:

12

Q: A reusable ProgressIndicator

There was a Tweet from @ExcelEasy earlier this week, that linked to this article, to which I replied with a little challenge: @ExcelEasy well done! #Challenge: make a more #OOP one without using the form's default/global instance! #becausewhynot Of course I wouldn't just leave it at that, s...

the Rubberduck project pretty much started with this post:

15

Q: Unit Testing in VBA

Unit testing in VBA is... lacking. (What isn't lacking in VBA though?) Since I've become more interested in unit testing lately, I decided I needed something better than Debug.Assert(), so I started building this framework. Currently there is a ton of functionality missing, but since I'm new to u...

oop unit-testing vba library interface

puzzlepiece87

Good stuff on the progress indicator, just finished it

Are you and @RubberDuck both vba contractors?

Zak

6:31 PM

They're more C#/VB.NET guys

IIRC

I think @RubberDuck currently works for a company working on a legacy VBA codebase.

Mat's Mug

I'm a "BI Specialist", doing SQL Server / SSRS and writing C#. But I stepped into programming with VBA

@Zak I'll do VB.NET at the point of a gun only

Zak

aren't C# and VB.NET quite similar?

Mat's Mug

don't you dare...

lol

once compiled, yes

Zak

So, what you're saying is I should skip .NET and go straight to C#?

Mat's Mug

.NET is the framework. C# and VB.NET are languages

you don't want to skip .net

if you know the framework, you can use it in all .net languages

Zak

6:37 PM

how do you learn a framework?

scratch that, what even is a framework?

RubberDuck

@Zak @puzzlepiece87 I actually work with a legacy VB.Net/C# codebase now, but I got my start writing enterprise Access apps.

Mat's Mug

@Zak you could see it as a set of std libraries

puzzlepiece87

This seems so much farther down the programming rabbithole than I want to go at the moment lol

@Mat'sMug I'm in BI too but definitely more in the business analyst with programming on the side role

Mat's Mug

6:59 PM

I work on Rubberduck to compensate for my dayjob's lack of actual coding

and because ~~I love pulling my hair~~ #GrammarIsFun

Hosch250

I work on RD because -- why not?

Also, I don't know VBA (and I'm not learning it!) and I do need practice with C#.

Mat's Mug

because writing code that uses code as data is utterly cool

4

regardless of what language it is

Hosch250

@RubberDuck I have more commits, but you have more changed lines.

Mat's Mug

it's just that VBA makes things harder at times - the grammar/lexer/parser struggles with some weird corner cases that VBA compiles without complaining

Hosch250

Yeah, I like VSD a lot.

Duga

7:03 PM

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] ThunderFrame commented on issue #924: Allow Copy of selected names in Object Explorer form

> Copy the node text. Ctrl-C would be good, but I'm always amazed at how many people don't know keyboard shortcuts. So maybe a context menu too?

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] ThunderFrame commented on issue #374: Compatibility check 32bit/64bit

> True enough. My nested snippet helped me find a parser bug though... Already raised.

Mat's Mug

@Duga it's a known limitation of the grammar definition.. not sure there's a way around it.

ThunderFrame

8:15 PM

I'm a VBA contractor, but I wear many hats. PM,BA,DBA,.NET Developer,Web Developer,Quant,Financial Analyst, keeper of the realm....

Mat's Mug

rubberduck question #49 posted :)

one more and I get a badge for creating the tag!

hey wait, no, stupid caching -- that is #50!

Zak

@ThunderFrame Sounds a lot like where I'm going to be in a years' time.

Dev/Quant/Analyst/General IT guy. Only with VBA right now but trying to move my company into proper databases and such.

ThunderFrame

@zak I know less and less about more and more... The joys of being a generalist.

Mat's Mug

now the big question: is reviewing duck faster than captain obvious?

Zak

reviewing duck?

Mat's Mug

8:26 PM

this room's question feed

Duck Review

1

Q: Inspector Rubberduck and the abstract inspections

The Rubberduck code inspections have just seen yet another structural change, hopefully for the better. The IInspectionModel interface was originally named IInspection; it only exposes the bare-bones inspection properties, those needed by the CodeInspectionSetting class: public interface IInspe...

c# rubberduck

Mat's Mug

ha!

oh, @DuckReview, sorry

right, DuckReview watches rubberduck posts, ReviewingDuck watches vba ones

ThunderFrame

@Mat'sMug I have a suggestion on the ProgressIndicator, but can't post easily because phone. I guess I'm best off commenting on the CR question, but maybe I add it as an issue on VBEX?

Mat's Mug

Is it on VBEX?

ThunderFrame

I thought I saw a CR comment saying it would be rolled into VBEX?

Mat's Mug

8:30 PM

I must have missed it - that's entirely possible

but I'm not maintaining that repo

I know it's been "stealing" a bunch of my code though ;-)

ugh, meeting, bbl

ThunderFrame

Anyway, the suggestion is to create an IProgress interface, and have your class implement the interface. Then the interface can be reused by access forms that do the same thing, or by classes that encapsulate the application's status bar progress indicator, or any other class that wants to show progress in ASCII art or whatever.

Mat's Mug

That's not crazy at all

Or IProgressView right?

Duga

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] INOPIAE synchronized pull request #906: Translation

ThunderFrame

8:48 PM

@Mat'sMug yep, but IProgress is more abstract. Your progress implementation might be a log file, so there's no "View" to speak of.

Added an answer.
http://codereview.stackexchange.com/a/116602/94097

Duga

9:06 PM

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] ThunderFrame opened issue #926: Persist user preference for Hidden Member visibility

> The VBIDE Object Explorer offers a context menu that exposes the hidden members of objects in Object Explorer and in Intellisense.
In a new session of VBIDE, the default setting is to hide hidden members.
It would be great if RubberDuck could remember a user's preference and show hidden members whenever a new VBIDE opens and the user preference is show.

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] ThunderFrame commented on issue #894: Win32 helper

> I had a look at how the PInvoke VS extension gets function declarations. The extenaion gets the full declaration (in both VB.Net and C#) in an XML SOAP request.

Being a full declaration, it doesn't break the arguments, types and return types down into XML nodes.

But the XML schema could be enhanced to handle that.

Mat's Mug

@ThunderFrame nice, upvoted!

that's really the "next step" :)

@ThunderFrame @RubberDuck @skiwi @EBrown @Zak say, anyone has an idea for a good approach to turn '@Folder Foo.Bar into a nested folder structure?

RubberDuck

9:26 PM

@Mat'sMug ask me later. Been in the war room all day. Long story. Gonna hurt an intern.

Zak

@RubberDuck Does the intern deserve it?

Or is that just your way of letting off steam :p

2

Mat's Mug

@RubberDuck but... this is the war room ;-)

enjoy the cigarette :)

RubberDuck

@Zak his bug caused us to have to restore a single table from yesterday, and take an application offline until it could be fixed.

I'd say he deserves it.

If I was being fair, I'd say it's our fault and we should have tested better....

Mat's Mug

^ you're all in it together!

ThunderFrame

9:48 PM

@Mat'sMug I'm undecided about whether we should delimit by period or backslash, or either. Period fits better with a namespace paradigm, while backslash works better with a folder paradigm.

I haven't had a chance to look at how the current CodeExplorer implements folders, but scaling from 1 to 2 is work. Scaling from 2 to n should be free.

Mat's Mug

at first I thought I'd make the annotation say '@Namespace, but decided against it because it would be misleading - a namespace implies a scope, and RD annotations do nothing to change how VBA scopes things. so I went with '@Folder instead. Perhaps I could make it work with a configurable delimiter, defaulted to a backslash.

ThunderFrame

Red-black tree perhaps? I think that's how VBA stores objects inside the binary (compound binary format)

Mat's Mug

github.com/rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck/blob/next/RetailCoder.VBE/…

^^ I'm currently creating a CodeExplorerCustomFolderViewModel for each different CustomFolder annotation

in other words right now this:

'@Folder Foo/Bar

would create a custom folder called "Foo/Bar"

...which is annoying

worse, if another module has '@Folder Foo, it's a separate folder from Foo/Bar

I think CodeExplorerCustomFolderViewModel needs a CustomFolders as well

and then I need to parse the path in a folder annotation and get the depth right

and that's where I hit a wall

maybe the whole entire approach is wrong, too

but having a separate class for each node type somehow feels right for WPF/MVVM

ThunderFrame

Add a property for Path (which gets Foo/Bar) and a property for Depth (which gets 2) and a property for nodeText (which gets Bar). Then populate the tree by ordering your objects by Path?

Mat's Mug

the code inspections treeview was much easier, everything happened in the XAML, and there was only 1 type involved.

I think I need some recursion in CodeExplorerCustomFolderViewModel, and I don't want it to happen in the constructor.

would it be too broad to ask on Stack Overflow and too localized to ask on Programmers?

ThunderFrame

10:28 PM

@Mat'sMug I guess you could frame it as building a tree from a list of paths returned by a file search?

Frame it as [a question on SE] building a tree...

Mat's Mug

yeah. I know "how would I go about X?" questions are generally too broad for SO.... but I have no clue about Programmers' scope (nobody does). I'll give it a shot.

Tweeting Duck

10:46 PM

Got something to say about how Rubberduck 2.0 inspections work? Now's your chance! #OSS #CodeReview #CSharp https://twitter.com/StackCodeReview/status/687010932615155712

Tweeted by rubberduckvba on January 12, 2016 at 10:34 PM

EBrown

@RubberDuck I think I feel for this intern. I forgot to update a confirmation number and now the company I work for has several data records that potentially violate a government regulation.

Duga

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] ThunderFrame opened issue #927: Code Inspections should be aware of the Project's Compilation Arguments

> Choose VBIDE's Tools..[Project Name] Properties... menu, and you can define multiple Conditional compiler Arguments, separated by semi-colon, eg.

MyProjectArg = 2 : MyOtherArg = 3

You can then use those arguments in Conditional Blocks:

```
#If MyProjectArg = 2 Then
#If MyProjectArg = MyOtherArg Then
Const Name = "Smith"
#Else
Const Name = "Jackson"
#End If
#Else
Const Name = "Jones"
#End If
```

But I don't know a way of determining the Project's Condit

RubberDuck

11:06 PM

@EBrown it's honestly not his fault. Review/testing should have caught it. We failed as a team.

Mat's Mug

@RubberDuck now you're talking like a ~~team lead~~ duck!

EBrown

@RubberDuck That's what we decided today in our meeting. While it may have been my responsibility to update this value, we all should have checked it to make sure it was correct.

The only problem is going to be explaining that to the government organization that determines whether or not we stay in business.

#Oops

Hosch250

That sounds scary.

What you need to do is explain what happened, how you caught it unusually quickly, and what you did to ensure it won't happen again.

And hope they don't decide to close you for political reasons (like the IRS was targeting businesses who had certain political beliefs not long ago).

ThunderFrame

11:22 PM

or close you for huge financial penalty reasons...

EBrown

@Hosch250 I did that. I was searching through logs for something else, found my error, and told my boss about it.

Hosch250

I mean, explain that to the gov agent.

EBrown

We then had a chat with our VP ops who doesn't think it's a big deal, but we'll find out next week after we run the report that these numbers are for, and get the response back. (It's a response that the government generates, apparently it takes 3-5 days.)

Hosch250

@Mat'sMug What I would do with that tree thing is literally build a tree out of it.

It shouldn't be that hard to parse it and create a tree.

So, what type of regulation did you break?

Duga

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] ThunderFrame opened issue #928: Code Inspections should be aware of control names on Access forms and reports.

> Access forms are different to VB Forms. Access Forms and Reports have their own set of properties, methods and events. Code Inspector needs to be aware of the "undeclared" members.

```
Private Sub cmdOK_Click()

'cmdOK is a CommandButton on an Access Form
'txtName is a TextBox control on an Access Form
'Firstname and Lastname are fields in the underlying recordset

'These 3 lines are functionally equivalent, and operate on a control on the form
txtName.Value = "Smith"
M

Duga

11:46 PM

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] ckuhn203 commented on issue #928: Code Inspections should be aware of control names on Access forms and reports.

> I won't lie. I've been meaning to do this for a while and have been slacking. Unfortunately, I'm the only Access dev on the project and have been tied up for quite some time.

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] ckuhn203 commented on issue #927: Code Inspections should be aware of the Project's Compilation Arguments

> This is sticky. We've tackled it before, but the only way I've found to do it is by opening the dialog box. I haven't found a programmatic way to do it. If anyone can figure out a way, I'd love to implement.

RubberDuck

@Mat'sMug the folder thing. It's really a Trie. Each node can have one parent and many children. I'm not sure how you're building the path, but it almost needs to be built as the project is parsed. Sounds like a job for a custom listener to me. We can attach more than one listener to the parser, can't we?

Hosch250

@RubberDuck What's the different between a Trie and a Tree?

@Mat'sMug I built a tree before for my app, if you are interested.

RubberDuck

On Enter, If @Folder, Split String, for each node, if node !Exists then add node

Hosch250

It essentially is a list of a custom type, which each has some relevant information and a list of the same type.

RubberDuck

@Hosch250 a tree is a tree, a trie is a bit stricter. There can only be one path between each child/parent IIRC.

The windows file system is a Trie.

Hosch250

11:55 PM

OK, I think I build a Trie. Reading this: stackoverflow.com/questions/4737904/…

Duga

[ckuhn203/VBEX] manfredk starred us

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] ckuhn203 commented on issue #894: Win32 helper

> :+1:

RubberDuck

Oh. Hey @Duga. I haven't thought about that project in a while.

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