Thank you MS, for everything

[Grovkillen]

My journey to where I am today started back around 2010, when I began creating tools in Excel/VBA. VBA was a great start, but it didn't take long for me to realize its limitations. After testing a few alternatives, I came across Macro Scheduler in 2012. That discovery became my gateway into serious programming. Macro Scheduler (MS) was more than just a tool – it was a game-changer. Its simplicity, especially in converting code into small, standalone EXE files without the usual compilation headaches, meant I could focus on learning and building instead of managing complex setups. Thanks to MS, I quickly moved from beginner to creating advanced programs, which I honestly couldn’t have done without its unique structure and ease of use.

Over the years, I've learned so much from MS, and I’m forever grateful for the support from the MS community. However, as my projects became more complex, I started feeling the limitations of MS in certain areas. It’s a fantastic tool, but modern interface development and database integration aren’t its strengths. For the past 4–5 years, I've found myself adding on external scripts, hacks, and workarounds to make everything work together, which makes the code harder to follow.

Still, MS has been a foundational piece of my programming life, and I deeply respect everything it taught me. The thought that MS may be nearing the end of its journey fills me with a mix of gratitude and sadness. Without some major new investment or a shift to open source, I'm not sure how MS can stay relevant, especially as new members in the community have slowed down.

So, thank you, Macro Scheduler, for everything. Without you, I wouldn’t be the developer I am today, knowing a mix of PowerShell, RegEx, VBScript, VBA, Python, C#, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, LaTex, Markup, and SQL. I hope I can one day repay what I've gained here, and though I’ll still be around, I’ll stop pushing for further development. Again, thank you.

[Marcus Tettmar]

Thanks for your post. Many people have come to Macro Scheduler with no programming background and then moved on to using full featured/traditional programming languages, so you won't be the first to move on. It has always been a stepping stone for many.

The core purpose for Macro Scheduler has always been software automation. While it can be used for more than that and many others have pushed the boundaries and scope, the reality is it cannot ever replace a 'proper' programming language, and was never designed to. While we have always tried to cater to all our users there are limits to what we can achieve and what makes sense from a business point of view. It doesn't make sense to be adding features that < 5% of users care about, especially if they are complex.

I don't agree that Macro Scheduler is not relevant. It is still relevant to its core purpose and to the many customers we have who use it for that, but again, I fully appreciate that if your needs have grown beyond automation, a different set of tools may be more relevant to you personally. The automation landscape has changed significantly since we started out in 1997. RPA has become a major industry in its own right and we recognise there are now many more choices out there, from using free programming languages with automation libraries like Python right up to $100,000+ RPA tools. But for many, Macro Scheduler still fits the bill.

Regarding the forums, we find that most users with maintenance ask questions direct to support, and 99% of the questions relate to the core capabilities. In a way I think the forums are a victim of their own success. There are thousands of posts here - I think most questions for newbies have already been answered. So I suppose it's only natural that they have got less busy. In fact I sometimes worry that the busiest forum posts are about requests for esoteric features that the average prospective customer has no interest in and may even put them off

[Grovkillen]

Thank you for your sincere and insightful response. I was, as you understand, interpreting the lack of discussions on the forum as a decline in relevance. But your viewpoint makes much sense, we're a dictionary and many just read and no post. Anyhow, I'm not abandoning MS in any way shape or form, just that I think my freakture requests are those <5% your talking about