I
encourage a guided, trial-and-error approach to learning how to
program. This is mainly because I don't think anyone can remember all
the facts and information you need to know without having some way to
apply that information in a practical way. Also, I think most of us are
impatient by nature and want to get started as soon as possible.
However, I don't want
you to confuse this approach with disorganization or sloppiness. Either
of those bad habits will make your programming experience difficult and
frustrating. The following list is a collection of good habits that will pay off as you learn and develop your career:
Declare all your variables
Adding Option Explicit
to the top of each class or module helps make sure you don't
accidentally misspell a variable name and cause a subtle error that can
be hard to locate.
Type carefully
Many names in Excel, such as worksheet names or named ranges, can't be checked through Option Explicit and misspelling one of those in code can lead to similarly hard-to-locate errors.
Use short, descriptive names
There are different conventions for naming
variables and procedures
but the crux of all of them is to be short and descriptive. Be careful
not to be too descriptive though. I try to keep variable names down to a
few characters and I tend to use whole words when naming procedures.
Avoid ActiveSheet and Selection
I know Excel records
code this way, but it is much better to get a worksheet or range by name
if possible. Relying on which worksheet or range is selected makes it
harder to debug and reuse your code. The exception to this guideline is
when you really want to act on the ActiveSheet or Selection, such as when you are creating general tools that work on any worksheet or range.
Try to think clearly
For complicated
tasks, it can help to write out what you want to do on a pad of paper,
then try to do those steps in Excel with macro recording on. Often it
helps to break a task up into several different steps and make those
steps procedures that you can call from one central procedure.
Rely on friends
There are a
lot of programmers in the Excel community and they communicate through a
number of very active newsgroups. Those are great places to look for
answers and to find samples.
Copy others
I don't
mean you should plagiarize copyright-protected work, but it's OK to copy
most code snippets, and it's good practice to follow the coding style
of others if you find it elegant.
Share with others
This is the other side of relying on friends and copying others. Don't be afraid of feedback, either.
Take a break
The best programmers I know lead balanced lives. You'll be surprised how many problems seem to solve themselves once you relax.
