Learning Alpha 5 V10

[Davidk]

Re: Learning Alpha 5 V10

Eddie,

Another 2 cents...

I've been working with Access since 1.0, hundreds of projects at all different levels... and always deep into code. I've transitions Access projects to VB and found that not too bad... copied a lot of code and "adjusted" where needed... at least the ideas and concepts were very close.

Because MS is a bondhead company sometimes and won't allow (easily) more than one version of Access and/or runtime on a PC at a time and Version 2007 runtime came out very late and then bad I switched to Alpha 5.

What a learning curve... getting too old for this stuff... however... it's been fun and the people on this board have saved me over and over and over... thanks everyone!

I have to agree with Cal... the code from the Genie's... while genius, is never what I would do... sometimes so complex I don't even understand what's happening on a first read.

Queries aren't really queries, Browses take some getting used to, always having to bind a form to a table, lots of little things drive you nuts but that's because, as stated by Kenn, trying to do stuff like Access is a complete waste of brain power and frustrating.

Read what you can, but dive in and just plug away. If you're working under time contraints then you're not going to be happy. Just pick a project and work away at it.

The OLE stuff is not as sophisticated or seamlessly integrated but it works (most of the time). I've done bar code scanners and graphics and images all with spending buckets of time trying to figure it out.

The bugs are fixed quickly, the run-time works, and Alpha 5 cares about us... a concept a bit foreign to MS.

When you run into a problem... search here and if not found post it. The same questions are always answers over and over... or pointed to... it's a great board and is requisite for learning A5.

[susanhbush]

Re: Learning Alpha 5 V10

My only concern was that I've talked with a number of developers who decided that Xbasic was too hard to learn because they saw how complicated the Genie code is. Since the original poster said he was pretty much at the expert level in Access (that implies at least some use of VBA to me) and implied that he wanted to learn Xbasic I thought it might be good for him to know that all those details in the code generated by the Genie are often unnecessary.

I see what you mean. All that extra code can be a bit daunting. Sort of like my GPS - if you live in the area, you can always do better on your own. When you don't know anything, however. The round about way is better than getting lost, that's why it is good for non-developers.

I do refer to the Genie code in my books as a way to learn Xbasic, because it can be helpful in certain circumstances. I'll put a note in the next editions that it is often more complicated than it needs to be.