UK AUG: Access Development with AI

FYI: Today's virtual presentation is only available to paying members of the UK Access User Group:

Talk & Chat January – Mike Wolfe: AI & Access – The UK Access User Group

<p>Mike\’s company is doing some interesting work with AI and Microsoft Access. In this Talk and Chat Mike will talk about some of the tooling they use and how they make it work. AI is very much the subject de nos jours, so knowing Mike this promises to be a thought provoking session that will likely provoke a lot of chat after his talk (just what the doctor ordered for the New Year!)</p>\n

UKAUG logo dark-bg 250w no strap

Tools to Code with AI

VCS Add-in

GitHub - joyfullservice/msaccess-vcs-addin: Synchronize your Access Forms, Macros, Modules, Queries, Reports, and more with a version control system.

Synchronize your Access Forms, Macros, Modules, Queries, Reports, and more with a version control system. - joyfullservice/msaccess-vcs-addin

GitHubjoyfullservice

Access Version Control Add-in Deep Dive with Adam Waller

Behind the Scenes of the Add-in That Makes Git Workflows Possible for Access Databases (an Access User Group Talk with Adam Waller)

No Longer SetMike Wolfe

Agentic AI Coding Tools

Claude Code - AI coding agent for terminal & IDE | Claude

Claude Code is an agentic AI coding tool that understands your entire codebase. Edit files, run commands, debug issues, and ship faster—directly from your terminal, IDE, Slack or on the web.

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Cursor

Built to make you extraordinarily productive, Cursor is the best way to code with AI.

Cursor

Markdown Viewers

Obsidian is best for managing a folder full of Markdown files–such as those that will accumulate in your code repositories over time when working with AI coding agents:

Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking

The free and flexible app for your private thoughts.

Obsidian

MarkText is a lightweight Markdown viewer and editor that is ideal as the "default" application for opening .md Markdown files on Windows. (Obsidian does not allow you to open a random .md file on your filesystem; it insists on creating Markdown "vaults" at the folder level.)

MarkText - Simple and Elegant Markdown Editor

Simple and Elegant Markdown Editor

Building Tight Feedback Loops for AI

The best way to unlock AI's potential in its current form is to provide it with as tight a feedback loop as possible and then let it iterate.

Artificial Intelligence Learns to Learn Entirely on Its Own | Quanta Magazine

A new version of AlphaGo needed no human instruction to figure out how to clobber the best Go player in the world — itself.

Quanta MagazineKevin Hartnett

clsLog: A VBA Logging Framework

Introducing clsLog, the no-frills logging framework. Prepare to supercharge your Access logging with the closest thing to NLog or Log4j in the VBA world.

No Longer SetMike Wolfe

Python-inspired Doc Tests in VBA

Doc tests are not a replacement for unit or integration testing. But they do provide the best return on investment (ROI) of any type of test, mostly because the effort to write them is near zero.

No Longer SetMike Wolfe

Voice-to-Text: When Typing Can't Keep Up

This is not your phone's built-in voice-to-text transcription. This is a context-aware magician that can actually save you time, especially when interacting with AI via a typical chat UI or an agentic tool like Claude Code or Cursor.

You have been invited to Flow | Wispr Flow

Flow makes writing quick and clear with seamless voice dictation. It is the fastest, smartest way to type with your voice.

Wispr Flow

Feature Development with AI

Code that Fits in Your Head

“Code that Fits in Your Head” is to senior software developers what “Code Complete” is to junior software developers. I can think of no higher praise.

No Longer SetMike Wolfe

What are Pure Functions?

The concept of pure functions explained in under 100 words. #under100

No Longer SetMike Wolfe

Idempotence vs. Determinism

Idempotent functions can safely be run multiple times. Deterministic functions always return the same output given the same inputs. Let’s explore further.

No Longer SetMike Wolfe

Future of AI

Future of Software Development with AI

However, we’re fairly confident that the overall trend is roughly correct, at around 1-4 doublings per year. If the measured trend from the past 6 years continues for 2-4 more years, generalist autonomous agents will be capable of performing a wide range of week-long tasks.

Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks

METR19 March 2025

Solve 1 Problem 3+ Ways

Coding tools that can run unattended for days at a time will require new techniques in software development. One such technique is to generate multiple algorithms to achieve the same result. This greatly reduces the chances of logic errors in code. I wrote about the technique years ago, but writing multiple solutions by hand to the same problem is not practical in most scenarios.

But if one had access to a tool that excelled at such tedious tasks...

Reduce Logic Errors in Critical Code

Software Developers Can Almost Eliminate Logic Errors With This Powerful Technique

No Longer SetMike Wolfe

Jevons Paradox

In short, the Jevons Paradox is the observation that the more efficient a resource is to use (code generation, in our case), the faster demand for the resource will rise–often leading to increased overall resource consumption despite the gains in efficiency.

In other words, AI will make writing code so efficient (and relatively cheap) that we will find many more uses for it–leading to greater long-term demand for software developers, not less.

Jevons paradox - Wikipedia

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Past Presentations

If you enjoyed my presentation today, you may enjoy some of my previous presentations, as well.