No Longer Set

New Syntax in twinBASIC: Part 1

Let's cover some new syntax in twinBASIC, including "AndAlso/OrElse"; the ternary If() operator; and "Continue For" and its cousins.

TwinBasic

Creating a twinBASIC ActiveX DLL

Okay, twinBASIC. It's time to make yourself useful.

TwinBasic

Debugging Code in twinBASIC

Experienced developers know that they spend more time debugging code than writing it. Luckily, twinBASIC has some capable debugging tools.

TwinBasic

Writing Code in TwinBasic: Part 2

Let's explore three more features of the code writing experience in TwinBasic: Code folding, Inline parameter hints, and Outline view.

TwinBasic

Writing Code in TwinBasic: Part 1

Let's explore three features of the code writing experience in TwinBasic: IntelliSense, Go to definition, and Semantic Highlighting.

TwinBasic

The TwinBasic IDE: VS Code

Many a fledgling programming language has died an early, quiet death at the hands of poor tooling. TwinBasic looks to avoid that fate with robust VS Code support.

Business

Site Search for NoLongerSet!

It was long past time I added sitewide search to this Ghost-powered blog. I could have used Solr, ElasticSearch, or Google. I chose something else...

Holiday

Happy Easter

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here."

Advanced

The Tradeoffs of ByRef and ByVal

As they say, there is no free lunch. Passing by value or by reference is the sort of distinction you can mostly ignore...until one day you can't.

Basic

Looping Through a List of Items

Here's a quick and dirty way to loop through a list of items in VBA.

Bug Alert

MS Access Report Horizontal Scroll Bar Bug

When certain reports open, the horizontal scroll bar gets drawn on the screen and then gets stuck in its original draw location.

Tools

KnowledgeBase Mausoleum

Looking for that long-lost KnowledgeBase article from 2003 but only finding a 404 error? This website brings dead KB articles back to life.

Tools

Rainbow CSV

If you work with delimited text files of any kind, you need to be using this VS Code extension.

Professional Development

Equal Parts Excited and Terrified

You know you’ve found a worthy challenge when you are equal parts excited and terrified to take it on. Because that is how you grow.

Commentary

Join Me at Access DevCon 2021

I will be presenting the about-to-be-released TwinBasic project from vbWatchdog developer, Wayne Phillips. Join me on April 22-23.

Advanced

Strongly-Typed Collections: The Easy Way

Creating a strongly-typed collection class in VBA requires jumping through code export-import hoops. What if you didn't have to, though?

Advanced

Strongly Typed Collections in VBA

Get better type safety and access to IntelliSense inside For Each loops by using "strongly-typed collections" in place of the VBA Collection type.

Commentary

Some Bugs are Better than Others

Not all bugs are created equal. Avoid the expensive ones by making more of the ones that are easy to find and fix.

Code Library

Getting a Temporary File Name with VBA

Here is a simple function to generate an unused temporary file name in VBA.

Code Library

Finding the Temporary Folder with VBA

Be a good steward of your users' file system. If you are creating temporary files, be sure to create them in the designated temporary folder.

Code Library

Nothing To See Here

Introducing InformNoData(), a simple function to improve the user experience when there is no report data to show.

Intermediate

Parameterized Constructors in VBA

VBA does not allow for parameterized constructors. We can work around that, though, using the Factory pattern and a strong naming convention.

Side-by-Side Reports in Access

A simple technique to view an old and new version of a report during development, while hiding the old (or new) version in production.

AutoHotKey

Streamlining SaveAsText / LoadFromText

SaveAsText and LoadFromText are indispensable for Access version control. They're also annoying to type repeatedly. Let's fix that.

Version Control

Reverting Unwanted Changes

Using Version Control in Access is like having a time machine that makes it easy to undo design mistakes. Here's a quick overview of the process.