.Select, .Activesheet, .Activecell etc...

Question

For this question, I refer to the post below to clarify myself:
Why is my conditional format offset when added by VBA?

In many, many posts I see these days, OP's are silently allowed to use .Activate, .Select, .Offset, etc... while they are an open door to potential bugs (most often caused by the end users).
The code is sometimes even supported.

My question: Is there one valid situation where you would use any of these statements without direct alternatives being available that catch typical bugs resulting from these stmts?

I'm referring to dynamic solutions that in my opinion are a must when developing for Excel. Personally, in more than 6 years I can't remember a single case where I needed it; it seems always to be one of the the worst options available. In my previous company, it was a silent rule never to use it and it only made my VBA life (and that of the end user) better.

Why I create this question is because I think that it is worthful to make newcomers into VBA aware of the risks they take when using these statements (by experience proven risks when the End Users do something unexpected - in the end they don't have any affection with VBA) and to propose direct alternatives (I won't state I always did that before myself, but I feel in my gut that there is something wrong with just offering quick solutions on already bug monsters).

I believe that when silently allowed (which it automatically enhances in this case), starting VBA developers will create a growing amount of tools the wrong way (and thus also newcomers will inherit the behaviour - which they will also learn from Stack Overflow since Google returns the results they look for (!)).
If the developer is not aware why he "can" use a "select" and in which situations it is a potential bug, (s)he should never use it imho. Personally I might use the select stmt in the immediate window to do some quick checks on dynamic range definition (bug mode), but not in written code.

The result makes VBA in the end even more unpopular than it is already; the language will be made the victim in case trouble appear (yet it is imho still the "best" programming support available for the Excel and Access applications). I've seen this happen too many times in a large company where VBA is always "shit".

This is only my own honest experience.
It is not a question of being right or wrong; I am interested in hearing your point of view on the question.

Answer 1

I agree about Select and Activate, but not ActiveWorkbook, ActiveSheet, and ActiveCell (I agree that they are abused, but not that they should be avoided, per se). There are definitely legitimate uses for those. I have a program that automates a "fill series" that does so from the ActiveCell. My program can't predict what cells will be used; it's up the user to select it. That's part of the user interface.

However, there are three situations where I have had to use Select (now four that I read about zoom, but I don't ever use it).

1. Conditional Formatting. There is a work around using Application.ConvertFormula, but it's worse than just storing the selection, selecting the right cell, doing the deed, and reselecting the previous selection.
2. Data Validation. Same reason.
3. Shapes. I wish I could remember the details, but it's been too long since I've worked with Shapes. There was something I couldn't do without selecting the shape first.

Ridding code of Select and Activate is a noble fight.