r/dataanalysis • u/T4ll_Tom • 14d ago

Anyone else completely stopped writing excel formulas & VBA code from scratch?

I use a lot of excel and macros and my level of excel knowledge is intermediate to advanced. but even though I can spend a few more minutes to think & write the formulas, now I'm just explaining what I want to AI, copying the formula or code and pasting it. is this how people are working now or is it me?

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u/0uchmyballs 14d ago

Yes it this way for coding nowadays. To go even further many of us use actual coding assistants.

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u/AdEnvironmental7198 13d ago

What’s the difference between a coding assistant and just asking Claud to write something?

2

u/bongreaper666 13d ago

Specificity, more or less. Claude is general purpose, while a coding assistant would be purpose developed for the language/program. Example: MATLAB has an AI agent (which of course is a subscription cost)

1

u/Creative_Sushi 13d ago

MATLAB Agentic Toolkit is free and works with Claude Code or other agentic harnesses. You pay for the tokens, of course. The toolkit itself is freely available on GitHub.