UK AUG: Access Development with AI

Mike Wolfe -

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

FULL DISCLOSURE: This is an affiliate/invite link. If you sign up via this link and dictate 2,000 words, I get a free month of WisprFlow. Doesn't cost you anything. Doesn't cost me anything (besides this disclaimer note). And if I didn't have this invite link, I would have posted a regular link to WisprFlow.

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
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.Contributors to Wikimedia projects

Past Presentations

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