Jim Dettman
jimdettman at verizon.net
Sat Oct 8 11:37:30 CDT 2011
Susan, Yes, I was surprised myself. First question I asked was; didn't they read it? Personally I think you hit it right on and they missed the point (and intent) entirely. The points you made were all ones that Access developers have lived with over the years. And FWIW, I KNOW they all have had to deal with the same issues(except for maybe Mark, who posted that first comment), which is why I don't understand some of those comments. And I do think your right; Microsoft is sliding Access towards the end-user end of the scale. We here all know it's much more then that, but it always has been marketed as an end-user tool and Microsoft seems to be focusing on that once again. Last couple of releases have been focused on simplifying things and adding end-user features rather then anything for developers. And long standing developer problems are simply not being addressed. What I see happening is Microsoft moving away from VBA for all of Office. Access developers will be either pushed into VS or Lightswitch, which will become Microsoft's light weight/RAD app development tool. Access may or may not remain in Office, but if it does, I think it will become a much simpler product. And before everyone gets up in arms about the "light weight" comment above, I do understand that you can do a wide range of things with Access and I do love it for that. But it does have some serious limitations. Access developers have been ingenious over the years in working around a lot of those limitations (i.e. lack of third party controls), but it has two serious problems that nothing can be done about; corruption and sensitivity to its environment. The latter is more of a reference to VBA and references, but how many of us have dealt with app install issues with either the full or run-time version? Or multiple versions on the same machine? If I asked those questions in a room full of developers, I bet you just about every hand would be raised. Personally I've been looking to move away from Access for quite some time as I am tired of dealing with the environment problems and the eye rolling every time I mention it. But I made the mistake of focusing on VFP. While it was more work then Access, it was also a lot more on the "developer" end of the scale. There was not much that you couldn't do with it. It was no where near as user friendly though. Just about everything was done from the command window. In fact I got laughed at a bit when I complained that I couldn't get the query designer to do a simple two table join right. The response was "no serious developer uses that". My only come back was "Why is it called VISUAL VFP then?" Got a lot of grumbles after that<g> But the data environment alone when working with forms is something Access developers would kill for. Add to that the ability to compile into a true .EXE, work with just about any 3rd party control, build COM objects or DLL's, having unit testing capability, and being able to do n-tier designs, and it made it quite attractive. Microsoft unfortunately killed it just as I was coming up to speed with it, so I was back to square one looking for the next best thing. I keep trying to get into VS, but I keep getting pulled back into Access. I guess I should be thankful I'm still working and for all those users that do get in over their heads<g>. Jim. -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Susan Harkins Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2011 10:38 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] 10 things I don't miss about Access Wow... I'm always surprised when someone takes such a 180% turn of what I've written. It's like they don't really read what I've written at all. They don't agree with a specific point or they read the headings. Thanks to you and Gustav for championing my true intent. I appreciate that. FWIW, the people that fuss the loudest about my opinions, seem to have much stronger ones than mine. I always find that... interesting. And of course, after they trash you, sometimes personally, they get even madder because you don't say, "Oh my, you're so right, thank you for saving me from my folly!" <groan> I love Access, always have. I'm sorry to see MS taking it in the direction they have, but even so, I can still admit Access' short-comings. I think that's just being realistic and frankly, you need to do that in order to give your clients/users the best of what they really need. I love Access, but I'm not a junkie. :) Susan H. > > OK, for those interested, here's the link that will give you a logged in > view of the EE thread that gustav mentioned: > > http://rdsrc.us/lIghoA > > Comments on Susan's article are the last fifteen or so comments at the > bottom of the thread (about 2/3'rds of the way down - first comment was > posted 10/7 at 4:29 pm). > > This is a continually running thread we have in the Access Zone, so there > is a lot of stuff in the beginning that doesn't apply. -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com