Office + Managed Code = Worth It/Ready?
So as a developer you use Visual Studio.NET and it's really hard to go 'back' to VB or VBA. I agree with you totally, but when you work with Office, it sometimes seems less obvious and more of a debate at this point...
Sure .NET managed code is better, negating just the ‘cooler’ factor, it does offer more robust security, tools, better deployment, greater efficiency, reuse, with more community resources & content than its predecessor technologies.
But Office still seems a quandary when making the choice to go managed. The issues seem to detract from the gains at times and I simply think in many cases, it simply isn’t ready enough (and many organizations aren’t either).
Even with VSTO and the PIA’s and the other great work the MS teams have done to improve upon this; sometimes, the old faithful ways just make better sense. It often seems it takes a lot more resources (time, effort, research, ‘demystifying’) to do some things we could already do. Since we can’t always rely on a specific version of Office being on a desktop, nor can we enforce that client machines have the CLR (and still have no strategy for getting it there), nor can we always depend on finding an IT admin who is willing to push out security policies for each app we produce.
Trust me, I really prefer working in .NET, but my question is, do you really think Office is ready for it? I mean really ready?
Now I now some of you reading this are partial (those of you who have a vested interest at stake; perhaps work for a particular software company; or those of you who will only work with the latest things) but I still feel that the answer is far from simple and of course very situational.
So let me ask you... what are you writing your Office solutions in today?
(Just for the record – I will be spending the rest of the day writing one in C# :-)