In a recent post, Paul Barnhurst raised the question of whether modern tools like Python, Office Scripts, Power Query, and Lambdas are replacing VBA in Excel. It’s a popular conversation on social media, reflecting broader trends in tech discourse. But what if the entire framing of this conversation is deeply flawed?
To challenge it, consider this analogy.
The Amish Motorcar
Imagine a group of people who embrace all modern car technologies—climate control, airbags, satellite navigation, in-car entertainment, and even sunroofs—but reject the engine. Instead, they strap horses to the front of their cars. Everything else progresses: GPS systems are upgraded, tyres become more efficient, and dashboards become sleek and digital. But the engine? It’s a taboo subject. Not only is it avoided, it’s not even acknowledged in conversation.
Within this community, a question arises: “Given all our advanced features, do you think we’ll eventually replace the engine?” In their world, this sounds like a sensible, even visionary, question. Outside that community, of course, it’s absurd.
This is a precise parallel to current Excel discourse on social media.
The Engine in Excel
VBA is the engine of many advanced Excel systems. It enables Excel’s seamless database integration capabilities such as ADO, for example. While not the only one, it’s the only engine embedded natively, broadly accessible, and proven at scale for automation, orchestration, integration, and interaction—all essential components of enterprise solutions.
Suggesting that we can replace VBA with trending tools like Lambdas, Power Query, or even Python, without acknowledging what VBA actually does, is like proposing that airbags will eventually replace the engine. It’s not a technical statement; it’s a cultural one.
It’s not about technology—it’s about what people want to talk about.
Walls Around the Mind
This echoes the twist in M. Night Shyamalan’s film The Village, where the audience discovers that what seemed to be a 19th-century community was actually a modern group that had built walls to keep out the real world. In the same way, some corners of the Excel world have built walls—ideological ones—that shut out discussions of VBA, client-server solutions, and enterprise-scale architecture.
These walls aren’t built out of ignorance. They’re constructed to protect social positioning. It’s easier to trend on social media by posting Power Query hacks than by diving into the real, messy, powerful guts of Excel solutions that operate across global organizations. The word “VBA” stopped trending years ago, and with it, an entire class of real-world Excel engineering was quietly walled off.
The Illusion of Progress
Social media isn’t reflecting the evolution of Excel technology—it’s reflecting the evolution of Excel conversation. And that’s an important distinction.
If the discussion is driven by what people enjoy talking about, not what technologies actually do, then we’ve shifted from reality to narrative. We’re no longer asking, “What is Excel capable of?” but rather, “What Excel stories get the most likes?”
Reality vs. Discourse
Here lies the most profound question:
Is reality what people talk about, or is it what demonstrably exists?
In the world of Excel, this question becomes:
Is Excel defined by what it physically and computationally achieves—or by what the trending influencers want it to be?
This is not just philosophical musing—it’s a call to clarity. If we care about building real, robust, enterprise-level systems in Excel, then we must be willing to look under the hood. We must talk about the engine.
Summary
Using the metaphor of the horse-drawn motorcar, we can see the absurdity of trying to replace the engine with features designed to enhance—not drive—the vehicle. In the same way, Power Query, Lambdas, and Python are valuable features in the Excel ecosystem. But without acknowledging the engine—VBA and its enterprise-grade capabilities—we risk fooling ourselves into thinking we’re modernizing, when in fact, we’re just rearranging the dashboard.
If we want real transformation, we need to stop pretending the engine doesn’t exist.
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