Commentary Managing Software Complexity: The Rule of Seven Don't try to increase the number of balls you can keep in the air; instead, reduce the number of balls needed to follow your software's logic.
Commentary How to Know When to Turn Lines of Code Into a Standalone Routine in VBA DRY vs. YAGNI. Don't Repeat Yourself or You Ain't Gonna Need It? Sometimes it's not obvious whether a block of code would be useful as a standalone routine.
Intermediate Karl's Catalog: A Checklist of Access Best Practices Karl Donaubauer's checklist of Microsoft Access best practices offers a wealth of information to beginners and professional developers alike.
Commentary Follow-Up: Avoiding Context Switching It doesn't matter which context you are working in–VBA or queries–the key is to pick one and stick with it.
Commentary The Problems with Boilerplate Code Copy. Paste. Modify. Repeat. Writing and maintaining boilerplate code is a necessary evil in VBA.
Commentary Avoid Context Switching for More Readable Code Writing code is like juggling. But mixing code, queries, and global state is like juggling balls, bowling pins, and running chainsaws.
Commentary PICNIC: The Underlying Cause of Many Technical Support Calls A PICNIC is the most frequent source of problems on technical support calls.
Commentary The Curse of Knowledge Even the world's worst programmer knows more about programming than most small business owners or department managers.
Commentary Expect the Unexpected Getting ready to start a complex project? Stressing about what might go wrong? Here's some advice to help lower that stress level.
Commentary Yes, VBA-Enabled Office Docs are a Significant Threat VBA-enabled documents are commonly used to open the door for more virulent malware.
Commentary Is Microsoft Access a Good Development Platform in 2022? Microsoft has embraced the mantra of "move fast and break things." For Access, though, Microsoft is only delivering on the latter part of that promise.
Commentary Code is WORM: Act Accordingly Write Once. Read Many. The cost of avoiding shortcuts when writing code is far exceeded by the benefits you'll get when reading it.
Whiteboard Sessions The Knowledge Square For knowledge workers in the 21st century, it's better to know what question to ask than it is to know the answer to the question.
Advanced The Microsoft Access Ternary Operator It's a function. It's a statement. It's an operator. It's a--what the heck do we call this short-circuit-evaluating IIf() thing and why does it even matter?
Commentary The State of Access Today What's the state of Microsoft Access in 2021: thriving, alive, dying, or dead? If you only know Access by reputation, the answer may surprise you.
Commentary The Key to Navigating Unfamiliar Territory Without a Map How I successfully led a 60-vehicle military convoy at 23 years old without knowing what I was doing or where I was going.
Risk Management Cowpathing with Microsoft Access How do you decide where to spend your software development dollars? Don't guess what your users need, let them show you with Access.
Commentary 3 Benefits of Writing Code Backwards Ignore those compile errors and start writing your calling code before your routines. This approach has many benefits.
Commentary Access Dataverse Connector Did you ever think to yourself, "I wish there was a way to make my back-end data less flexible *and* less powerful?" Good news; your wait is over!
Commentary Let's Make Access More Version-Control Friendly Hey! Wouldn't it be great if Access was version-control friendly out of the box? If you agree, head over to the Access feedback portal and vote for my request.
Commentary How to Request New Features for Microsoft Access After a long and conspicuous absence, Microsoft has finally published a new website where you can submit and vote on feature requests.
Commentary 5 Types of Documentation Each type of documentation has unique strengths and weaknesses. Knowing when and how to use each is an important skill for every developer.
Commentary Eliminating Friction The key to becoming a better developer is to make it so The Right Way is also The Easy Way.
Conventions Naming Conventions Matter: Making Wrong Code Look Wrong Joel Spolsky and Antonin Scalia join forces to help illustrate the importance of sensible code naming conventions.
UX Simple vs. Easy It's not easy to build simple software. These 4 simple tips will make the process easier.