I Love You MS Access. (1 Viewer)

[wazz]

So, just how does one get 'a thousand' posts?

http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=129413

 

[doco]

And their language was Pascal

Worse yet a variation of same called 'ObjectPal' - ARGH!

 

[KKilfoil]

Worse yet a variation of same called 'ObjectPal' - ARGH!

There was nothing wrong with it, other than that it wasn't VB(A) (which was also quite limited, in that era)

The only reason VB took off and became a pseudo-standard was Micro$oft's relentless support for it.

I remember dbII and the hubbub when dbIII became available, and deciding whether to stick with our Victors or switching to the newer, more expensive IBM PCs (back when Bill Gates declared that "640k of RAM is all anyone will EVER need"!).

Heck, I've actually used FORTRAN77 on a DEC mainframe, and Assembler on a 4040 and 8080 microprocessor. How many of you kids even know what any of the nouns in the previous sentence means?

 

[Banana]

(back when Bill Gates declared that "640k of RAM is all anyone will EVER need"!).

Erm, I have no love for Bill, but should point out that this is something attributed to him; there is no record of him actually making such statement.

 

[KKilfoil]

Erm, I have no love for Bill, but should point out that this is something attributed to him; there is no record of him actually making such statement.

Well, he DID personally design the whole damn operating system (or at least the parts that he didn't steal from CP/M), back when he was a poor college drop-out, and mapped out the address space such that 640K was DEFINED as the upper limit (before his team contrived such things as expanded and entended memory), so he must have at least THOUGHT along those lines at some point.

 

[Banana]

But there IS a possibility that 640K limit, back then, wasn't totally arbitrary limit but rather a practical limit (perhaps it could be the cost or availability of parts or something like that). After all, in that day, memory was very expensive and lot of programmers, whether they're working on Mac, IBM/PC, or whatever, had to exercise lot of creativity to cram as much as functionality they could into each byte.

 

[KKilfoil]

But there IS a possibility that 640K limit, back then, wasn't totally arbitrary limit but rather a practical limit (perhaps it could be the cost or availability of parts or something like that). After all, in that day, memory was very expensive and lot of programmers, whether they're working on Mac, IBM/PC, or whatever, had to exercise lot of creativity to cram as much as functionality they could into each byte.

If you do a web search, you can find some info on this issue. Basically (no pun intended), he chose to a) make decisions that limited the address space to 20 bits (or 1M addresses, and then b) arbitrarily put the 'system memory' stuff at the top of the address space rather than the bottom, so that the range above 640k became 'forbidden' as RAM addresses. A LOT of gymnastics were eventually performed (with accompanying waste of cpu clock cycles, back when machines were only running at 4.77MHz) to gain access to higher address space in later versions of DOS...

But I think I'll stop here on this little hijack attempt, and return this thread to its regularly scheduled programming.

 

[mdemarte]

There was nothing wrong with it, other than that it wasn't VB(A) (which was also quite limited, in that era)

The only reason VB took off and became a pseudo-standard was Micro$oft's relentless support for it.

I remember dbII and the hubbub when dbIII became available, and deciding whether to stick with our Victors or switching to the newer, more expensive IBM PCs (back when Bill Gates declared that "640k of RAM is all anyone will EVER need"!).

Heck, I've actually used FORTRAN77 on a DEC mainframe, and Assembler on a 4040 and 8080 microprocessor. How many of you kids even know what any of the nouns in the previous sentence means?

FORTRAN - Formula Translation Language, used more for scientific data. I started my programming using Fortran on punch cards.

Assembler - Yep, boy wasn't it fun to enter computer commands in hex on a tiny keyboard? We usually had to figure out the answer on paper first or else enter the program on 2 different machines and compare answers, because the machines didn't always work correctly!

My turn - Anyone know for what a PDP8 machine was used? For databases, I started programming in Wang Basic, then converted that program to Lotus Approach. Developed more in Lotus Approach and also cleaned up a database in FoxPro. Converted Approach into Access (big THANKS to this forum for help with those databases). Now I'm being told to convert some of those Access databases to Web-based programs using HTML and Java. Slow going.

 

[doco]

Now I'm being told to convert some of those Access databases to Web-based programs using HTML and Java. Slow going.

XML and its myriad derivitives couldn't be far behind

 

[David Eagar]

I am probably not the first to discover this, but there is a serious flaw with Access

The more alcohol I consume, the less user friendly it becomes!!

When will Bill Gates rectify this serious shortcoming?

I only have the blinding flashes of insight after a few, but can't get them to work - Next morning, when brain is working to get it to work, can't remember blinding flash

Now if this was a truely intuitive program............

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Well, I never worked PDP-8s but I had a PDP-11 on wheels that me and two other lab rats shared.

But my first programming assignments came about in Fortran pre-1970 on an IBM 1620 Mod I, after which I learned assembler on same.

We later had a DEC PDP-10 (KA-10) with a whole 32K words of RAM. (Wasn't byte-oriented so I didn't state size that way.) I did about half-a-dozen languages on it including an assembler library for their flat-bed plotter. I later learned that my plotter library survived another 10-15 years after I left the university. Imagine my surprise when I interviewed at a job where the boss had actually used some of my software! I could have gotten the job but it was going to be a pain in the patootie because of crazy funding sources. Lots of instability.

I used to code PDP-11 assembler a lot and even did VAX assembler. Now THERE was a machine language for you - 300+ instructions and a dozen addressing modes that weren't trivial. At least 10 different hardware data formats from byte integer to double floating and a couple of string and BCD formats for good measure. I won't say I was an outright expert but at least twice I reworked BASIC code with a delicately chosen bit of assembly language that improved program performance 60- to 80-fold. (No, not 60% ... 60-fold. Like, a program that used to run in 22 minutes 15 seconds dropping down to 17 seconds flat with no loss of accuracy.)

I gave up assembly when we shifted to Alphas. They are RISC machines and it ain't worth the effort to do that by hand. Let the compilers earn their keep. But other languages on Alphas run like bats out of hell.

 

[Salient]

My biggest problem with Paradox for Windows - at least, the first version that I tried - was the events they recognized were deficient. Less than half of the events seen by Access of the same vintage. And their language was Pascal, which was OK but it wasn't quite like VBA.

On the other hand, I've had guys in my office who swore by Paradox. I just never saw anything in it that I had to have.

Strange, I used to swear at Paradox.

Quite liked Delphi, but Borland have bollocked it up in the last few releases imho.

Anyways since I'm at work, back to trying to work out how come I can't go into design mode with Access 2003. Been given an existing app to work on, and it has one nasty little bug in it. Actually thinking of just rewriting the thing over the weekend to make life easier. Expecting some newbie questions.

 

[boblarson]

Anyways since I'm at work, back to trying to work out how come I can't go into design mode with Access 2003.

Are you sure you have an mdb file and not an mde file?

 

[Salient]

Are you sure you have an mdb file and not an mde file?

Yeap, didn't know about that hold the shift key down A whole bunch of stuff fires when you open the db otherwise.