5 ms·

I will admit a love/hate for Access. Namely, from years of teaching Microsoft Office as Intro to Computing. Access was always the section that was hard to convi

I will admit a love/hate for Access. Namely, from years of teaching Microsoft Office as Intro to Computing. Access was always the section that was hard to convince students they'd ever need and worse yet outright made the class logistically harder for Mac users. I will say, however, Access has SOME benefit to Information Systems education, especially in a general IS class. These students are marketing, accounting, etc. and so Access offers these students a quick dip into the world of DBs to understand how they operate without requiring they set up a local server or import some complex SQL statement. This is a super niche group though, one that does not warrant much support. If someone were to develop an online Access-themed learning environment that taught those same basics, it would have the exact same benefits without the tangled Office requirement.

asdfman123 7y ago
I wonder how many people became actual programmers due to Access. I feel like MS can't remove it just like you can't remove the second rung of a ladder.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
  Even if MS feels they can't remove it - the fact they haven't made any significant improvements to it (even those to keep it usable on modern computers) means it will die a slow death and leave people stranded - the same way they did with VB6. For example, the SQL text editor in Access is so broken if you copy and paste tab characters they're displayed as zero-width and break text rendering (if you click+drag to create a text-selection the selection will cover the wrong text) and you usually get a syntax error if you make any changes to the query after pasting it (but if you don't modify it then it's fine). Never mind the lack of syntax-coloring or auto-completion. Microsoft says they are not planning on making any changes to the SQL text editor: https://access.uservoice.com/forums/319956-access-desktop-application/suggestions/10263849-provide-a-better-sql-editor https://access.uservoice.com/forums/319956-access-desktop-ap... There's also a fun bug where the outermost LEFT OUTER JOIN in a query with 2 or more other joins will fail if the right-hand table has zero rows (but will work if the right-hand table has zero matching rows).
  - alexhutcheson 7y ago
    The SQL text editor in Access is so frustrating! As soon as you switch the tab you're looking at, it will change your carefully-formatted query into a condensed unreadable mess.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I managed to corrupt my database and make all of the code irretrievable just by pasting a line that was too long, if I remember correctly. Luckily I was making daily backups. I also ran into a bug where if you read a long calculated text field from a view/query through VBA, it corrupts everything after 255 characters, even though you can get the data otherwise through the interface or save it to a table. Googling suggested this problem had existed for 10-15 years. Also, a lot of times your query will return neither a value or null, but "#error". And I really hate the way it destroys all your formatting whenever you save a query. Every time I need to change something, I end up copying to a text editor and formatting by hand in order to find whatever error I just introduced.
Clubber 7y ago
My university used it to teach relational database design, querying, form design, and report design concepts. It was really useful to have all that in a single software package. My senior project was to create a complete project plan in MS Project for a system (I chose a video rental point of sale system), then build it out using Access. The project plan had to be a semester long plan, including features and assigned assets. The system had to have a proper ERD, forms and reports. It was a two semester course and taught me a ton about how to actually build software in a business environment.
bluedino 7y ago
The place I work at has an access app with 250 modules. It's a nightmare of "access has run out of memory" and other fun errors.

asdfman123 7y ago

I wonder how many people became actual programmers due to Access. I feel like MS can't remove it just like you can't remove the second rung of a ladder.

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
Even if MS feels they can't remove it - the fact they haven't made any significant improvements to it (even those to keep it usable on modern computers) means it will die a slow death and leave people stranded - the same way they did with VB6. For example, the SQL text editor in Access is so broken if you copy and paste tab characters they're displayed as zero-width and break text rendering (if you click+drag to create a text-selection the selection will cover the wrong text) and you usually get a syntax error if you make any changes to the query after pasting it (but if you don't modify it then it's fine). Never mind the lack of syntax-coloring or auto-completion. Microsoft says they are not planning on making any changes to the SQL text editor: https://access.uservoice.com/forums/319956-access-desktop-application/suggestions/10263849-provide-a-better-sql-editor https://access.uservoice.com/forums/319956-access-desktop-ap... There's also a fun bug where the outermost LEFT OUTER JOIN in a query with 2 or more other joins will fail if the right-hand table has zero rows (but will work if the right-hand table has zero matching rows).
- alexhutcheson 7y ago
  The SQL text editor in Access is so frustrating! As soon as you switch the tab you're looking at, it will change your carefully-formatted query into a condensed unreadable mess.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I managed to corrupt my database and make all of the code irretrievable just by pasting a line that was too long, if I remember correctly. Luckily I was making daily backups. I also ran into a bug where if you read a long calculated text field from a view/query through VBA, it corrupts everything after 255 characters, even though you can get the data otherwise through the interface or save it to a table. Googling suggested this problem had existed for 10-15 years. Also, a lot of times your query will return neither a value or null, but "#error". And I really hate the way it destroys all your formatting whenever you save a query. Every time I need to change something, I end up copying to a text editor and formatting by hand in order to find whatever error I just introduced.

Clubber 7y ago

My university used it to teach relational database design, querying, form design, and report design concepts. It was really useful to have all that in a single software package. My senior project was to create a complete project plan in MS Project for a system (I chose a video rental point of sale system), then build it out using Access. The project plan had to be a semester long plan, including features and assigned assets. The system had to have a proper ERD, forms and reports. It was a two semester course and taught me a ton about how to actually build software in a business environment.

bluedino 7y ago

The place I work at has an access app with 250 modules. It's a nightmare of "access has run out of memory" and other fun errors.