Moving the Queen

Here’s the kind of the weird conversations I get drawn into.

I was explaining a solution to an Excel problem that involves looping though a range of cells. Nothing too exciting. Actually very simple.

And I get the response (almost like ‘it’s against the rules’). ‘But that’s VBA’.

‘We can solve this problem quite easily by looping through this range of cells’ I said.

‘But that requires VBA’. I hear some disapproval in his voice 🙁

‘Hmmm’ I hmmmmmed. ‘Ok. Say you have a chess board, and for the purpose of this illustration you need to move the Queen over all of the squares. Can you do that’?

‘Yes, Of course I can’.

‘So what’s the difference between moving the Queen over a chess board and moving a cursor over a range of cells on an Excel sheet’?

‘You need VBA!’

‘Yes. You’re right. You’re moving the cursor with VBA in Excel, whereas you’re moving the Queen with your hand on the chess board. Why do you think one is more difficult than the other?’

‘I don’t know VBA’.

‘Were you always able to move the Queen on a chess board’?

‘No. I was once a baby!’

‘Yes. So how hard was it to learn’?