MS Access vs .NET (1 Viewer)

[latex88]

I have been an Access advocate for a long period of time. Although I do not have a programming background (at least educationally), I have managed to learn as I go with numerous applications I've developed. I am at a point that I want to get very serious about becoming a programmer and learn VBA hardcore, but I am hesitant to devote the time thinking that it's a dying breed due to the rising of popularity in .NET.

I love Access and I don't think the learning curve would be that steep in comparison to either VB.NET or C#, so I'd prefer to continue on the path of acquiring more skills in VBA. Am I wasting my time with VBA and should redirect my efforts to .NET, or Access still has plenty of gas in the tank? I would love to have some perspective from those who have migrated to the .NET world.

 

[plog]

You'e kinda talking apples and oranges. .Net is a framework--its not just 1 language, its a development package. VBA is a language, a language specific to Microsoft Applications that support it. Visual Basic on the other hand is a language and its a language that's part of .Net.

So, I wouldn't become an expert in VBA on my own (if I had a job that required it and paid, I would). My suggestion is you move to .Net and use Visual Basic within .Net. Visual Basic is very similar to VBA, so when/if you have something to do in Access you will have the expertise to do it.

 

[latex88]

You're right. I seemed to have compared VBA to .NET in my verbiage. I guess I meant more in line of Visual Studio vs MS Access. To me Access is such an easy database management system, coupled with the ease to create forms and reports. Furthermore it has the capability of using other bigger database such as SQL, Oracle, etc. as backend, MS Access just seems so much user friendly for developers. Since I'm familiar with VBA and Access tools, I feel I will struggle with learning VB or C# as a new programming language to get into VS.

 

[ButtonMoon]

If your goal is to maximise your appeal to potential employers now and in the forseeable future then get some experience on one of the major development platforms, e.g. .NET or Java EE. In the .NET space VB.NET comes very much second to C#. If you've decided to make the move to .NET then C# is probably the one to learn.

 

[Pat Hartman]

You also need to consider work environment. As a "programmer" you will work in an IT department and have little control over anything. You won't be designing the app, you won't be designing the database, you won't be talking to users. You will be doing what someone else tells you to do.

If you work with Access, you will more likely than not either have to be a consultant or work in a user department. Working in the user department, you will be doing the design of the app, you will be designing the database, you will be interviewing the users, you will be testing the app. You will need skills the cover the complete life-cycle of a project from inception to delivery. Programmers just write code and occasionally test it.

Which do you think is a step up?

 

[ButtonMoon]

You also need to consider work environment. As a "programmer" you will work in an IT department and have little control over anything. You won't be designing the app, you won't be designing the database, you won't be talking to users. You will be doing what someone else tells you to do.

This seems like an oddly old-fashioned view of a developer's job (the title "programmer" being relatively unusual these days).

Modern development practices tend to favour cross-functional teams where developers most definitely are involved in design, testing and working closely with users over the full lifecycle of a product. The market for .NET consulting and development is large and buoyant. Clearly the scope and sophistication of what you can do on the .NET platform is far greater than if you just know VBA. Knowing .NET should give you more oppotunities to work with a wider range of technologies and techniques and very likely bring you into contact with larger and more interesting projects. So yes, learning and using .NET most definitely is a step up. Obviously a lot depends on your ambitions but after all why limit yourself to just one product?

 

[Lightwave]

Have a look at the folowing.

The idea of stacks

Access keeps things nice and simple by keeping a lot of the hard lifting all together. Moving away from it you have to start to understand the separate parts and the idea of Stacks. Using Access you can achieve everything that moving out of Access you need a whole stack to achieve.

So the chances are you will never move completly away from Access it is a complete solution whereas something like .NET is only a segment of a stack. Even if you got to know a complete stack its going to be easier to implement many solutions in something like Access. Plus you can still rely on existing structures.

Maybe the LAMP stack could give you an introduction to what it is like at the more hard edge of development. The MS stack requires access to tools and programs that all cost money so not sure how you get experience to that. You could for instance start by signing up to a Linux Virtual Private Server and then starting from there.

From my listening to industry insiders it is not clear which STACK will come out on top so Obsolescence is a risk of being in the trade