[AccessD] SPAM-LOW: Skill Zones

Charlotte Foust cfoust at infostatsystems.com
Wed Jul 1 12:05:04 CDT 2009


>I would also say that until you truly understand classes you will NEVER
transition smoothly to .Net.

I have to agree with that, John.  EVERYTHING in .Net is an object, even
a simple string.  Everything has methods and properties, and you have to
learn to work with them rather than just operate on them.

Charlotte Foust  

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 9:56 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] SPAM-LOW: Skill Zones

Of course I agree with Charlotte, when you finally wrap your mind around
classes, suddenly they become like a nail gun vs a hammer.  But you have
to really get there and that is the problem most people have.

Imagine that you live a mile from town.  You have always ridden a bike.
It seems like that works quite well, after all you have always ridden a
bike, and you cannot really imagine why you would need more.

Then your friend lends you a car while he's on vacation for the month.
Asks you to feed his cat and dog, check on his mother in the next town
over.  you drive, you run around, you haul stuff for his mom, you
suddenly see that a car is a different breed of transportation from a
bike.  A bike works, but it is just a different breed.

Until you actually use it, day in and day out, you just never
appreciated how different it was and what it allowed you to do.

There are things that you simply cannot reasonably do without classes.
But until you have tried to do those things you cannot understand what
they might possibly be.

Let me give you an example, caching data.

I use tables where the data doesn't change from month to month.  These
tables have hundreds of records, and yes, I could just set up things to
seek etc to go through and find data in these tables.  But I USE these
tables to control whether specific tabs are displayed, whether certain
subforms are allowed to load and so forth.  I use these tables
PROGRAMMATICALLY, in loops in programs where decisions are made etc.  To
try and seek to specific records then get certain fields would be
several orders of magnitude slower than to simply load each record into
a class, then load those record class instances into a collection, keyed
on a common lookup field (what you would Find Next on or SEEK on).

Record / record supervisor.  Once I have these I can get at any field
that I need (or specific fields that I need all of the time) and I can
get at it INSTANTLY.

Collections of classes keyed on a search data are something that you
cannot even understand until you do it.  Once you do it, the light bulb
goes on.

Goto http://www.databaseadvisors.com/downloads.asp and click on the
zipcode demo.  You cannot do this kind of thing without classes.

Click on the Openargs demo.  You cannot do this without classes.

I could swear I had another demo up there for SysVars.  That is another
thing you just can't do without classes (it is the cached record idea).

I would never say that you can't be a very good, very successful
developer without classes.  I would say that once you understand and use
them you will be in an entirely different league, because what you can
do suddenly changes.

I would also say that until you truly understand classes you will NEVER
transition smoothly to .Net.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


Max Wanadoo wrote:
> Dan, you don't.  I have been using access for donkey years...you DONT 
> need classes.  Dont listen to the purists.  Do what works for you..
> 
> Ignore the apple...
> 
> Max
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Charlotte 
> Foust
> Sent: 01 July 2009 16:22
> To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] SPAM-LOW: Skill Zones
> 
> No, Dan, you need lots of classes, but you only recognized the need 
> for one!  LOL
> 
> Charlotte Foust
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Dan Waters
> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 8:17 AM
> To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] SPAM-LOW: Skill Zones
> 
> John,
> 
> How about if I added in 'Large Scale Data Transformation'?  From your 
> descriptions of what you do, that sounds reasonably concise.
> 
> You're right - if you can do everything in the two lower zones and a 
> few things in the Pro Zone, then that's where you're working!  I have 
> to make a confession - I've only written one class.  But - I only 
> needed that one.
> 
> Dan

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