I don't think that would make it much simpler (if that's what you're getting at). There's tons of grunt work that just has to be done - eg. calculating expected dividend payments (by automatically matching portfolio details to dividend schedules from corporate websites), and automatically matching those to bank account credits - all through code. Despite the laughs that the VB languages get on HN, VBScript is in fact, a fully featured traditional imperative programming language, and has all the features you'd expect in such a language (but no IDE :-(). So I doubt that rewriting in python would make much difference. And I'd still be bound to the IE automation model.

To wafflesindeed (there's no reply button):

> I'm not OP, but I suspect they meant that Python and some libraries would have solved your problem in a few days of work.

I wrote software professionally for 30 years. I have a good understanding of the work required to implement a business requirement! I cant really see myself spending 10 years on a one-week task :-)

PS. I didn't downvote you.

> And I'd still be bound to the IE automation model.

Why? You fetch data, calculate stuff and give out reports. Unless there is heavy javascript involved, you don't need a browser for any of this. But now you are dependent on the fragile setup you have created, hopping that VBScript, IE and your datasources will continue to work as long as you live.

Becoming independant and gaining a future ground would be a valid reason to change to a better environment. It doesn't need to be Python, but considering the requirements, Python is a very good choice for this it seems.

All of the websites concerned have strict authorization requirements and none have public APIs afaics. At the start, it just seemed easiest to automatically scrape them. I guess I could have reverse engineer their private APIs and used those - but as the doctors say, the retrospectoscope is a rare and expensive piece of equipment!

Is authorization done with some activeX-applet? Otherwise I don't really see what IE is offering that Chrome offers too, but scrapping-libs can't.

BTW There are libs to use chrome programatically for those things. It's called headless-mode or chromeDriver. Similar things exist for other Browsers. So you could probably rewrite your app to become more indipendant without lossing the existing functionality.

I just don't see enough cost benefit from rewriting hundreds of thousands of lines of working code at this time. I can't see IE going away, any time soon, due to corporate tie-in. Hopefully VBScript ditto. If it all falls over down the track, I'll review my options then :-)

I'm not OP, but I suspect they meant that Python and some libraries would have solved your problem in a few days of work.

This is particularly true in the UK where there's a big push for "Open Banking" where banks must provide APIs for developers.

This would remove your dependency on IE if it was all done from the command line :)