[AccessD] OT:Old Dog, New Tricks

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Tue Jan 11 20:20:11 CST 2011


I was trying so hard not to say that.  ;)

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com

On 1/11/2011 7:41 PM, Darryl Collins wrote:
>
> _______________________________________________________________________________________
>
> Note: This e-mail is subject to the disclaimer contained at the bottom of this message.
> _______________________________________________________________________________________
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>
>
>
> "Ick!  Sometimes you do what works because you can manage to do that.  Six
> months later you look back and go "Ick!"."
>
> That neatly sums up the last 20 years or so of my programming life... :)
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
> Sent: Wednesday, 12 January 2011 8:20 AM
> To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] OT:Old Dog, New Tricks
>
> LOL, yea.  I'm here to tell you though, it is incredibly more powerful.  It's going to take you
> awhile to get the hang of it, just the simple things.  Then one day you will wake up and say "I need
> to raise an event and pass a message" and you will start another journey.  You will say "I need to
> learn threading", and you will start another journey.
>
> I have designed a status list class which allows me to instantiate the status class deep down in a
> class structure, and pass in the list control pointer from the form.  Once I do this I can update
> the status even though the thing wanting to write to the status list is running in a thread.  Very
> cool and very powerful, especially after struggling for a long time just to update a simple text box
> from a thread.  The old way I was doing it was raising an event, handling it in the next level up,
> raising an event to pass the status up the chain etc until it was finally sunk on the form.
>
> Ick!  But it worked.  Ick!  Sometimes you do what works because you can manage to do that.  Six
> months later you look back and go "Ick!".  But we all went through that with Access as well.
>
> Now my status class handles all of the stuff required to get the form's thread to do the update, and
> passing the status to that thread correctly.  I now have major components three class levels down
> that can own a status list and display their status with nothing more than a call to the status
> class' method.  What a hoot!  And perhaps someday I will look back on this and go Ick!  But for now
> it works.
>
> John W. Colby
> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>
> On 1/11/2011 3:36 PM, Tony Septav wrote:
>> Thanks JW
>> It may be a brave new world but it is scary.
>>
>> jwcolby wrote:
>>
>>>> 1. To finally get my Web Page (I designed it over 2 years ago) up and running. It is nothing
>>> fancy but how can I be a credible programmer when I can't direct a client to my Web Page.
>>>
>>> When you are done with yours, how about fixing up mine? ;)
>>>
>>>> 2. Start learning VB.Net. I know some of you favour VB.C+ but I am an old dog and I didn't want
>>> to tackle any thing too foreign.
>>>
>>> As I said many times, pick a .net language, *any* language, and get started. VB.Net is a fine
>>> language, you will love it after not too long.
>>>
>>> I would suggest that you take a course at your local college. This gives you immediate projects to
>>> complete, homework that has to be done, other students to learn with etc.
>>>
>>>> Let me tell you I have been struggling with VB.Net. I am pretty proficient in getting Access to
>>> do what I want. Now I have to learn a whole new bag of tricks. It didn't help that some of the
>>> first tutorials I looked at kept trying to show me how to display "Hello World" on the console.
>>>
>>> It is a bit frustrating at first, partly because it is tough to do the database stuff until you
>>> get comfortable with the environment itself. We all want to start at virtuoso and that definitely
>>> ain't happening with .Net.
>>>
>>> If you haven't already, join the vb list. A lot of the .Net only stuff goes by on that list.
>>>
>>> John W. Colby
>>> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>>>
>>> On 1/11/2011 1:28 PM, Tony Septav wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hey All
>>>> Happy New Year.
>>>> Well after reading your online intriquing and interesting chats and advice I have decided
>>>> 1. To finally get my Web Page (I designed it over 2 years ago) up and running. It is nothing fancy
>>>> but how can I be a credible programmer when I can't direct a client to my Web Page.
>>>> 2. Start learning VB.Net. I know some of you favour VB.C+ but I am an old dog and I didn't want to
>>>> tackle any thing too foreign. I hope to have my first application out of here by the end of January.
>>>> Just kidding.
>>>> Let me tell you I have been struggling with VB.Net. I am pretty proficient in getting Access to do
>>>> what I want. Now I have to learn a whole new bag of tricks. It didn't help that some of the first
>>>> tutorials I looked at kept trying to show me how to display "Hello World" on the console. I finally
>>>> found one that showed me how to link to an Acess MDB and design a form with navigation, add new and
>>>> delete buttons. So now I am off and running. I still get frustrated because I know what I want to do
>>>> but at this point I don't know how to do it in VB.Net. But I keep remembering something I read years
>>>> ago. It went something like this.
>>>> Ted and Paul are having a conversation. Paul says "I would really like to learn how to play the
>>>> piano, but I hear it takes about 5 years to really learn how to play it well, I just don't think I
>>>> have the time". Ted thinks about it for a moment and then realizes that Paul had said the same thing
>>>> to him 5 years ago.
>>>> So hopefully I can persevere and catch up to you guys. I just hope it doesn't take me 5 years.
>>>
>>



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