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Admin
Sorry, is that "hours, ninutes and seconds" format?
Admin
32.7 ninutes in a minute
Admin
“We can just put the MDB on a shared drive,”
this is bigger DWTF then the custom-defined timeAdjust function
Admin
Very disappointing ending.
Admin
"Perhaps the greatest evil Microsoft ever perpetrated on the world was putting a full-featured IDE on every end user’s desktop"
Let this quote be forever remembered.
Admin
Easy Reader Version: Access, AMIRITE?
F*** YES!!!!
Oh and TDWTF-WTF still not fixed login: Illegal arguments: string, object
Admin
While there are many places where MS-Access is abused, there are also a good number of places where it is an appropriate tool. Therefore TRWTF is to bash the tool instead of the abuser.
IMPO usage of MS-Access would be a major improvement over many of the WTF abuses of Excel.
Admin
As I always say, it is not the tool that is used that causes the problems, it's the tool that uses it.
Admin
Yes, but MS-Access is so much more expensive than MS-Excel!
Seriously, I think it is justified to somewhat bash a tool that encourages beginners to create convoluted, unmaintainable monsters. And a bit more to bash the people that are responsible for letting it loose on the public.
Btw, I remember having heard that application being called "Microzoff Abscess"
("Zoff" is German for "trouble" or "quarrel")
Admin
Are you talking about personal computers?
Admin
So the code is a bit odd - but I've done worse - and it doesn't explain at all why the application is slow. Here is how the story went... "There was a really slow application, and when John investigated how found nothing to do with the slowness. He rebuilt it anyway because he's a smug prick."
Admin
I've heard it like this.
If you can do it in Excel, then you shouldn't do it in Access.
If you CAN'T do it in Excel, well, then you shouldn't do it in Access either.
Admin
'Perhaps the greatest evil...'
Utter elitist twaddle. There's a good reason MS does so well and it's not because they restrict programming to only those 'worthy' of doing it. Idiots.
Admin
Doesn't matter. VB is terrible and C# is objectively better. For this issue of restricting people, consider that anyone can use ECMAScript, but just because you have a "kewl" CodePen page doesn't make you good at it.
Admin
Did a couple of Access front-ends linked to SQL back ends. Bit of a bummer getting decent operation in the first instance but very un-troublesome once deployed to be fair, no issues at all, don't need to deploy Access as you can use the run time engine no probs.
Admin
Blaming Access for poorly designed databases is like blaming Word because a document isn't in APA format.
Admin
"by"?
Admin
Access is a great tool for bashing out GUI's for user queries and input connected to small Access or SQL Server databases. I can make such an application in Access in a fraction of the time it would take in VB.Net or C#.
It's all about using the right tool for the task.
Admin
You missed out "in my opinion" when you stated an unprovable claim.
Admin
To date we still have approximately 20 Access 97 databases on shared drives being used as "production" programs.
Fun fact: Even when some of these databases were rebuilt as web apps, the users still called them "databases". It really shows how little they actually know what they know when talking about things.
Admin
The real issue is that management teaches themselves by recording macros, inspecting and editing them. This reinforces a style of any-way-to-get-it-done-is-the-right-way.
This is very typical.. Lower management creates shitty macro-applications, uses that to move up the management hierarchy until they are Peter-ed out. Then they become the IT expert and hire actual programmers, actual programmers the good ones leave immediately, less experienced stay only to get fired once they dare to insult the existing code, newer programmers learn bad behaviors and ultimately take years longer to shake the bad habits.
I've seen this time and time again.
Admin
"Even when some of these databases were rebuilt as web apps, the users still called them 'databases'. It really shows how little they actually know what they know when talking about things."
Having a hard time parsing this. Presumably the web apps are just front-ends to the database. So they're not really that far off when they continue to use the word "database", depending on the exact sentence.
Admin
Back when I was starting to learn BASH (not that I'm any sort of expert now - Ruby is easier for me for anything "interesting") the top tutorial site that google gave me at the time proudly proclaimed that one of the great things about Linux was that it turned everyone onto a programmer.
Nooooo!
More on-topic, where I work our main product for years was using Access .mdbs as documents. The user would open a project contained in an .mdb file, spend hours or days making edits and then save or not save. Just like using Notepad. But we outgrew Access, so now we have the same semantics into SQL databases.
Admin
"into a programmer" not "onto" - that would be a kinda cool dating site.
Admin
No one knows if timeAdjust can be replaced by dateadd. With timeAdjust, we can see what kinds of WTFs occur if the added or subtracted minute crosses a boundary between standard time and daylight savings time. With dateadd, no one knows what will happen.
Admin
My first job out of uni was (partly) maintaining a simple Access database that morphed slowly into a "MDB on a shared drive" monstrosity. I petitioned the management several times to hire a proper programmer to rewrite it (I'm an electronic engineer), but there wasn't the budget for that.
I swore I'd never go near Access or VBA again.
Then six months I started volunteering at a small charity. They needed someone to make their data collection smoother. All on little homegrown Access databases. By this stage I'd become more familiar with modern web apps, so I offer to do a complete rewrite. They decline, since doing that would mean they can't maintain it after I've gone. I try to explain that they probably won't be able to maintain the Access DBs after I'm gone, given how complex they've got. But quite understandably they're risk-averse and especially cost-averse. Since I can't quantify the cost or risk of either choice, they're sticking to what they know and I'm firing up Access and hitting Alt-F11 once a week.
The scary thing is that I'm starting to enjoy it.
Admin
It's equivalent to calling the tower on the desk a "hard drive".
Admin
Back in my day the IDE included on everyone's computer was qbasic. In high school I made a program so large the qb45 compiler couldn't complete linking. It did work in interpreter mode and eventually stole linker.exe from vbdos which let it work with quick basic. :)
Admin
... and from that salutary lesson you learned to write your code in a more compact, maintainable, modular and sensible a style?
Admin
Eh.. No thanks, considering the demographics of most programmers... ;-)
Admin
<quote>"Even when some of these databases were rebuilt as web apps, the users still called them 'databases'. It really shows how little they actually know what they know when talking about things."</quote>
Perhaps you are TRWTF.... Does not your web app represent "a structured set of data held in a computer, especially one that is accessible in various ways".
Admin
Or the screen on the desk the "computer". (Not to be confused with one of those AIO jobbies.)
Admin
Perhaps the greatest evil Black & Decker ever did was to make tools so cheap everyone could have power-drills ...
Admin
Been there, had that headache. Splitting the database actually doesn't help a bit. As soon as someone starts using the Access database -- EITHER database (the "code/UI" MDB file, or the "data" MDB file) -- that file is locked until they close it. I ended up having to duplicate the "code/UI" database onto every end user's machine, and that allows me to update the master "code/UI" database, but I still can't edit the "data" MDB file because it's still shared.
It actually wasn't too bad in Access '97, because then you could just copy the database, edit the copy, and then copy it back, overwriting the file that everyone's using while they're using it (!!!)... shockingly, this actually didn't make everything blow up like you'd expect it to. That is, until Access 2003, when we very quickly learned that this is a good way to get your database corrupted, and then we had to come up with a different deployment process which included running around to about 20 different workstations and making everyone close Access and hoping they remembered long enough to let you run back to your workstation and grab exclusive control before they tried to re-open it.