[AccessD] Old Dog, New Tricks / To Visual Studio or Not

[Bill Benson]

You might look into Bizspark, and for your own LLC. The latter can be done
without lawyers,  if you are not doing it with any deep concern about
crossing i's and dotting t's, and just want a way to represent to Microsoft
that you are entering a new chapter in life (visual studios development) -
you can even bring along a few associates for the ride. But your aim really
ought to be making money as a developer,  I am not advocating you just lie
to them. They are a great company and this is a great program. Many people
have formed startups after working for other corps, so this is maybe
something you can do on the side.
On Mar 6, 2015 7:52 AM, "Brad Marks" <bradm at blackforestltd.com> wrote:

> All,
>
> I have developed applications since 1975 with my first 33 years in the
> mainframe realm (IBM, MVS, COBOL, DB2, Easytrieve, BAL, RPG, etc.)  I am
> now semi-retired and work part-time for a small manufacturing firm (50
> people).  Over the past few years, I have developed a number of
> applications with Microsoft Access.  About five years ago,
> I suggested to the management team that we look at using Visual Studio.
> This suggestion was voted down due to the time and expense of introducing
> Visual Studio at that point in time.
>
> The company ownership and leadership has changed over the past few
> months.  I believe that there might now be a willingness to consider the
> introduction of Visual Studio.  I have briefly read about “Visual Studio
> 2013 Community” and I have started to watch some Visual Studio training
> videos on YouTube.
>
> It appears that I can experiment with “Visual Studio 2013 Community” with
> no financial investment, just an investment of time.
>
> However, because the small firm that I work for has annual revenues
> greater than one million, I would not be able to build and deploy
> applications with “Visual Studio 2013 Community” at work.  We would need to
> buy the professional version.
>
> I have some questions about moving from Access/VBA to Visual Studio (or
> using VS to supplement existing Access application).
>
> How steep is the learning curve?
>
> How long did it take others to get up to speed with VS?
>
> When I develop applications with Microsoft Access, I use a “full” version
> of Access.  The deployment is made to about 25 PCs that have Microsoft
> Access “Runtime” (free).
> I assume that if an application is developed with Visual Studio, it can be
> deployed to other PCs for free.  Is this true?
>
> I am going to be 63 years old in September.  I really like to learn new
> things and experiment.  I have tons of free time to watch training videos
> and play with the software.  However, at my age and with possible cognitive
> disabilities from so many years of working with COBOL, I am not sure that I
> want to take on something as large as Visual Studio.  I know that this is
> really a personal decision, but I would appreciate any insights about an
> old dog’s ability to learn new tricks.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Brad
>
> PS.  Currently all of my development work is for in-house desktop PC
> applications.  Our website is outsourced to a contractor.  There has been
> some discussion about bringing the maintenance of this website in-house.
> This would obviously change the picture.
>
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