[AccessD] OT:Old Dog, New Tricks

Tony Septav iggy at nanaimo.ark.com
Tue Jan 11 15:51:32 CST 2011


Hey JW
Now you really are scaring me. I am just a newbie to this stuff and what 
you are explaining to me at the moment is "Greek".  Someday hopefully I 
will be able to debate with you on these things.  All things aside I 
really appreciate your enthusiasm. 

jwcolby wrote:

> 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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