Introduction to VBA and Excel (for a philosopher)

[Scylax]

Hi all,

If you were to recommend one book, website, or series of Youtube videos to a philosopher buddy for a crash-course in VBA, what would you recommend?

First post, I do hope I've posted in the right place and according to community guidelines. I did find a similar post here but felt it had a different general thrust than my own question.

To expand a little: I'm just starting to use Excel and VBA on a number of projects, and am very excited about the possibilities. Overall, I'm quite new to using computers for anything other than the very basics (only about 3 years now, before that just email, google, and word, like yer grandma). However, I have a degree in history from an earlier, more care-free time, and my chief areas of study were the history of science, mathematics, and philosophy.

In other words, I'm this odd egg in that once I'm able to peel back the jargon, understanding the abstraction underpinning programming languages comes pretty naturally. The problem is, all the resources I find are more practically oriented, aimed at people who just want to learn how to compile reports in the office, "Excel for Dummies," that sort of thing. I'm looking for something that will help me get the concepts, the abstractions.

Now, I realize I actually need to go up the tree on this, and learn about more general types of programming. I've been working through the really quite good stuff on codeschool.org but that's more general material about object-oriented programming as exemplified by several popular languages. But I'm wondering if anyone out there knows of any materials as I'm describing that are specific to Excel, or VBA?

Many thanks,

 

[jeffreybrown]

This is a good start...

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/923710-visual-basic-applications-excel-books.html

 

[jtrombley24]

I've enjoyed several over the years:
- Excel Programming by Jinjer Simon (Visual Blueprint)- easy to read/understand with excellent code samples that automate daily tasks.
- VBA and Macros by Bill Jalen (QUE)- Chapter 1 has a good explanation about objects, methods, properties etc, relating it to English nouns, verbs, etc.
- Excel 2007 VBA Programmers Reference by Green, Bullen, Bovey and Alexander (Wrox) - for when you want to get deeper.

Trevor Easton on YouTube has some FANTASTIC videos, I recommend searching him first thing. He's an excellent tutor.

Good Luck,
Jim

 

[Scylax]

Thanks jeffreybrown and jtrombley24,

jeffreybrown, that list is HUGE! A comprehensive resource to be sure (bookmarked it for later reference) but not the sort of thing I'm looking for. Let me ask you a question that might clarify it: is there a book (or other resource) that made it "click" for you?

jtrombley24, ordered VBA and Macros, also looked up Trevor Easton. Weirdly, the first video I found covered the exact topic I was looking for!

Thanks again,

 

[jeffreybrown]

is there a book (or other resource) that made it "click" for you?

No, I don't actually read any books on this topic, it has just come thru years and years of working on projects and spending many hours on forum's like this.

Trust me, I have asked a ton of questions which has enabled me in-turn to answer some.

 

[RoryA]

For pure VBA, the VBA Developers Handbook by Getz and Gilbert is about as good as it gets IMO. (my degree was also in philosophy, FWIW).

 

[Scylax]

Thanks, RoryA, and thanks, jeffreybrown,

RoryA, I'll certainly look into it. I'd be interested to know a bit more about your experience picking this stuff up. I find it's quite an odd experience to find I'm actually using some of that stuff for something! It's often quite angry-making: "but they already had a word for that" I yell while my long-suffering wife rolls her eyes, "they've had a word for that for three hundred years! Why do we need a new one? I would've understand what they meant hours ago!!!"

jeffreybrown, yes, I'm realizing that having that human-to-human contact is HUGE when learning this stuff--as it is with learning any language, I suppose. I've been seeking out a tutor, someone who can work with me regularly, in my local community... and I signed up here and intend to be fairly active (and, I hope, eventually useful). I'll be posting my first actual excel problem today!

 

[jeffreybrown]

I'll be posting my first actual excel problem today!

We look forward to working with you in your future endeavors.

 

[Scylax]

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar!

 

[jeffreybrown]

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar!

Thanks, but when it comes to scholar, Rory, the other MVPs, and many other members here are the scholars...I just get lucky every once and awhile.