career advise from EXCEL/VBA developers needed

[bartekR]

A wanna-be programmer needs some career advise from people who have been there before and are kind enough to lend their opinion about making career steps in IT.

Before I started learning programming I worked in accountancy and banking on administrative positions for about 3 years. More or less 1,5 year ago I started working on some small projects in VBA and got really hooked on. The genuine pleasure of writing code made me think that this was actually the thing I would like to do for a living.
Not having any previous experience in programming I knew that the road to finding employment in this profession would probably be long.

Now it’s been a year and a half since I started and during that time I managed to get some confidence in VBA for Excel which I think I got on a fairly decent level
(I understand arrays, loops, declaring and working with all sorts of variables, general “good practice of coding”, concept of object oriented programming, controlling other windows applications from excel, basics of API, xla addins, etc) I learned couple of things about SQL (parameter queries, table joins, basic statements, sQL in vba).

Although surely there is a lot more to learn in VBA, I am currently thinking about starting on the second programming language and here comes my question : what do you think I should take on next?

Trouble I got with answering that question myself is that even narrowing my choice to the programming languages listed in adverts for the jobs such as Junior Excel/VBA Developer you still get number of different options from C++, C# , VB-VB.NET and RAD, to even JAVA.

As mentioned before I have a background in finance and would like to stay within this area however on a more challenging position that the one I currently have .
At the moment I work as a finance admin in investment banking being involved in pricing pension funds units. Although I do get chances to write something in VBA in this job I think I have reached the point where I really need to, at least see a possible career change on the horizon.
Therefore at this stage it is quite important for me to make a good decision about the 2nd programming language. Ideally I would like to start sending CV’s in about 6 months and by that time reach at least an intermediate level in any 2-nd programming language.

Please let me know your opinions on the direction ou think I should take. Any feedback will be much appreciated.

 

[Chance1234]

C# without a doubt, especially in a investment banking eniviroment.



Chance,

F, G + [sub]H[/sub]H

 

[xlbo]

I would second that - C# in a .NET environment is very powerful and used a lot all over the place

Rgds, Geoff

We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names and all are different colours but they all live in the same box.

Please read FAQ222-2244 before you ask a question

 

[supanoods]

My previouse company sent me on a .NET training course for beginners, whrn it first appeared, and I was amazed how much there is to it - so if you can learn it - i imagine you will create a lot of oppotunities for your career!

PS - I bought a book that specifically looked at using .NET together with Microsoft office - Very Very Handy


Cheers, Supanoods B-)
"If it aint broke - dont fix it!

 

[MacroAlan]

Definitely C#. It will be usable in the next version of Excel and is widely used in Visual Studio shops.

I'm trying to learn it fast enough.


Alan

 

[bartekR]

Alan, Goeff, Chance, Supandoos

Thank you very much for taking time to respond.

Your unanimous advice convinced me to have a go at C#.

I'd like to ask you one more thing - would you be able to recommend any good books on C# for beginners? (ideally with some good examples for finance).

Once again thank you.

 

[Chance1234]

As someone who is learning C#

I hate to admit it, but microsoft have got the express edition spot on and the help behind it.

The thing which takes getting used is the syntax more than anything else

Theres a post i just awnsered on here in regards to the file open dialouge in VBA and excel

the C# equivilant is a;long the lines of

 private void openToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            {
                // Create an OpenFileDialog object:
                OpenFileDialog openFile1 = new OpenFileDialog();

                // Initialize the OpenFileDialog to look for text files:
                openFile1.Filter = "Text Files|*.txt";
                // Check if the user selected a file from the OpenFileDialog:
                if (openFile1.ShowDialog() == System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK)
                    // Load the contents of the file into a RichTextBox control:
                    rtf_body.LoadFile(openFile1.FileName,
                    RichTextBoxStreamType.PlainText);
                    bp.Name = openFile1.FileName;
            }
        }

once you get used to the {{ and the }} it flows very nicely

Chance,

F, G + [sub]H[/sub]H

 

[Bong]

That looks a lot like Java.

_________________
Bob Rashkin

 

[Chance1234]

very very simliar .... but faster ;-)

Chance,

F, G + [sub]H[/sub]H

 

[WinblowsME]

Forget IT. Become a rockstar.

"Money for nothing and the chicks for free." <- You can't beat that.