[AccessD] Access Development Future

[Rocky Smolin]

David: Nice to hear from you.

I'm still doing sporadic work for a few legacy customers. It's fun. But
it's not a living. Well, that's because I started to wind my business down
many years ago. Simply did not P.R. or advertising. And the clients mostly
went away. And I'm retired and those few extra bucks are not going to
change our lifestyle.

I have heard (and I believe) that there is a huge installed base of Access
apps, and they'll all need support from time to time. You don't need 99% of
that market - just enough to keep you and the bank happy.

Access and VBA is an obsolete technology. But so is COBOL and during the
Y2K "crisis" they were bringing retired COBOL programmers in to update the
apps.

But a new business of any size is probably not going to have an app written
from scratch like I used to do - they're going to want it in something that
can port to the web easily (or start there).

I don't know who old you are or how close to retirement you are or how
close to being ready for that. But if you've got a time horizon in decades
instead of years, you might want to think about taking your database and UI
designing skills to a more moderne platform.

Let's see what others on AccessD think (if there are others :--) )

 Best,

r



On Sun, Oct 25, 2026 at 2:26 PM David Emerson <newsgrps at dalyn.co.nz> wrote:

> Greetings Listers,
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> All has been quiet on the Access front.
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> I am interested on how many of us are still supporting Access applications?
> Has AI made a major difference to existing client databases or is there
> still a niche for our work in smaller businesses that don't have the funds
> to take advantage of the latest technologies?
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>
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> David Emerson
>
> Dalyn Software Ltd
>
> Adelaide, Australia
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