Where are the Access Developers?

[TC]

I'd like to open a discussion about the state of the industry. For the
past year, I've been unable to find competent Access developers
available for hire. I'm worried about that.

I think there's great demand right now, and that's keeping the good
developers busy, but that's not enough to explain the situation.
Whenever I post an Access job, I get lots of responses from .NET
developers, back-end database people, and web developers. They all have
the attitude that "I don't really do Access application development,
but Access is easy, so I can handle your job." (No!) The message I'm
getting is that people are choosing to build their skills in .NET, in
back-end database work, and in web development, even though the market
is well-served in those fields, but they aren't building their skills
in Access fast enough to keep up with the demand.

If that is indeed what is happening, I can't find a good explanation
why. Sure, Access has a lightweight reputation, and people don't see it
as a career-maker -- but that has always been the case, yet somehow
there have always been plenty of Access developers in the past. What
has changed now? I can't help but wonder if Access's star has faded to
the point where job seekers eschew it as old technology. That would be
a shame, because I think it will be a very long time before Access
loses its market niche.

Anyway, those are my comments. I wonder if other Access professionals
have made similar (or conflicting) observations.
-TC

[debbie]

Here I am! I only want to do Access programming, I found plenty of
people in my area that needed help fixing, improving and creating
Access databases. Now a year ago we moved to a new area, due to my
husband's job...I'm hard pressed to find ads for admin or clerical work
that involves Access, let alone real Access work. I've talked to the
employement outfits and they almost never get a call for Access...the
one tech employment agency won't touch me because their clients always
want more then Access. I just do Access and I've made a living of
it...I hope to continue learning and working with Access. Any
suggestions for finding Access work would be appreciated.

A Continuing THANK YOU for the talented people of this group that are
so giving of help and information.
Debbie

[Larry Linson]

"TC" wrote

I'd like to open a discussion about the state
of the industry. For the past year, I've been
unable to find competent Access developers
available for hire. I'm worried about that.

I think it is a combination of problems.

A few years ago, though not at the same time in all US locations, the
business climate "cooled" rather drastically. In the Dallas - Fort Worth
area, where I live, the pullback became more obvious around 2000. Along with
that retrenchment, the need (and funding) for new projects or enhancements
dwindled, so there were not as many jobs or contracts. I know competent
Access developers who reported to me that they were working for half the
rate they had gotten a year previously, and felt lucky to get any work.

Microsoft launched their DotNet initiative, with massive hype, about that
same time. I am sure it was devastating to some people in Microsoft to find
that developers using their product were no longer recognized by the
"powers-that-be" as being "real developers" but some sort of hobbyists...
even though they were doing development all day long, every day. That
advertising, attitude, etc. had a significant effect over time.

Over time, the business climate has improved and the need for developers has
increased. But, quite a few Access developers moved on to other careers, or
to IT platform jobs, or to DotNet or Java, and have not found sufficient
incentive to move back. Those of us who "rode it out" in one way or another
are finding more work now than in the past few years.

Without a good, steady supply of Access developers, there is less incentive
for businesses to choose Access; without projects in Access, there is less
incentive for developers to work in Access. (Unlike the heyday of classic
VB, when, in my area, a good Access developer was likely to make more than a
good VB developer, DotNet jobs tend to pay more because they tend to be
concentrated in the "enterprise " market.)

If you read the trade magazines, you'll find the emphasis, even when it is
on extreme programming, pair programming, etc. to be at a level of coding
detail that Access programmers just don't have to deal with. I doubt those
object-oriented programmers are going to have the kind of database "smarts"
that will let them move into an Access Rapid Application Development
environment without a good deal of attitude adjustment.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

[Craig Alexander Morrison]

sigh!

[Craig Alexander Morrison]

If you are having problems getting the right staff I would suggest you
reconsider the database designers especially if they are good
RELATIONAL database designers.

They will get Access and should be able to be productive very quickly.

Nearly 15 years ago it took me a long weekend to realise that I could
give up DB2 and the corporate world and support the small business
sector using Access/Jet.

Any good relational database designer (especially with a smattering of
VB) should be useful within a month.

Slainte
Craig Alexander Morrison

[Craig Alexander Morrison]

"I have the opposite problem. There isn't much in the way of freelance
in my
neck of the woods (NW England)"

I'll bear that out, I am now based in Dumfriesshire and if it wasn't
for my clients dating back to when I was based in London and The South
East I would not be able to make a living on the local economy of the
Border counties.

Indeed I am now more into property development rather than database
development.

Slainte
Craig Alexander Morrison

[Terry Kreft]

You have no idea what you are talking about, which is hardly surprising as
you were not around at the time.

You will notice that there is a similar notice attached to virtually every
piece of code on the Access Web. This was something Dev did after the work
of the people who contributed to the site and the work put in by Dev to
build and maintain the site was ripped off by certain people. There was a
discussion about the issue between the contributors at the time and it was
decided that adding the notice you cite may act as a deterrent to further
rip-off merchants.

My personal opinion was and always has been if I post it then you can use
it, but please try to remember to attribute, some people are a bit more
protective of their code though.

If you had any intention of presenting a balanced view of Dev's
contributions you could have referenced the INetlib or any one of the other
major pieces of code he has posted here or on his web site but of course
your only intention was to try to appear smart, unfortunately you just come
over as smart-arse.
--

Terry Kreft
"rkc" <rk*@rochester. yabba.dabba.do. rr.bomb> wrote in message
news:YO******** *************@t wister.nyroc.rr .com...
<SNIP>

This is a example of code that was thought to be so brilliant
by the pioneers of Access that it needed to be copyrighted.

'************** *** Code Start *************** ****
'This code was originally written by Dev Ashish
'It is not to be altered or distributed,
'except as part of an application.
'You are free to use it in any application,
'provided the copyright notice is left unchanged.
'
'Code Courtesy of
'Dev Ashish
'
Function fIsFileDIR(stPa th As String, _
Optional lngType As Long) _
As Integer
'Fully qualify stPath
'To check for a file
' ?fIsFileDIR("c: \winnt\win.ini" )
'To check for a Dir
' ?fIsFileDir("c: \msoffice",vbdi rectory)
'
On Error Resume Next
fIsFileDIR = Len(Dir(stPath, lngType)) > 0
End Function
'************** *** Code End *************** ******

[Terry Kreft]

The VB (classic) data bound controls/methods are buggy and to be honest a
nightmare to implement.

When I started doing VB database stuff I used the data bound controls and
spent 3 times as long (at least) working round the bugs than I do by just
doing everything unbound.

The problem is, as you say, people coming the other way don't understand
that Access was written to be used in bound mode and does it extremely well.
--

Terry Kreft
"David W. Fenton" <XX*******@dfen ton.com.invalid > wrote in message
news:Xn******** *************** ***********@127 .0.0.1...

"Larry Linson" <bo*****@localh ost.not> wrote in
news:fffAf.86$M e5.55@trnddc05:

"David W. Fenton" wrote

I can't imagine that .NET developers would have an
understanding of using Access the way it is intended,
with bound data.

That's been the case for Access' whole life... if the people came
from what was considered a "normal developer" background, they
were "babes in the woods" with regard to databases. They didn't
understand Queries or SQL with Joins, so did a lot of unnecessary
work. Add to that the problem that the VB and C/C++ interface to
Jet didn't work well with bound controls...

Actually, .NETters may be a little more enlightened, as Microsoft
has included SQL Server in the ".NET" and "developer" categories.
The DBAs and SQL Server developers have helped the VB.NET and C#
crowd to understand "database" to some degree. On the other hand,
I am not sure that the decision to enhance SQL Server by including
the .NET languages along with T-SQL wasn't a holdover from the
"Duh, whutz a database?" days.

I agree with all of that.

But none of it has anything to do with *data-bound* controls, which
until recently, were hardly found at all in any MS products other
than Access. Well, that's not entirely true -- there have been
data-bound controls for VB, but my understanding was that they wree
substantially harder to use than Access's bound forms/controls, and
that many non-Access developers just didn't have the right kind of
thinking for bound data.

This is where the WE MUST USE UNBOUND FORMS!!!! hysteria comes from,
I think, as well as the idiotic resistance to Jet.

They are likely to be looking for complicated data
grids, and want to do things mostly unbound and
avoiding Jet because they have prejudices built up
from working in a different environment.

Yep, I occasionally attend some meetings where .NET is discussed
and it amazes me that some presumably-knowlegeable business
developers act as if "glitz and glitter" and non-standard ways of
presenting data to the user actually are useful in solving
business problems.

I'm just going on what I read of the technologies and the kinds of
issues that people coming to this newsgroup seem to bring.

Acess is different.

And in a good way.

But many of them can't abandon habits of that that they've acquired
in the other development environments. In those other environments,
I have not doubt that their habits are superb and crucial to getting
things done efficiently. With Access, they have to change they way
they think, or they will always end up fighting against the basic
architecture of the whole development platform.

Thus, I don't really think that the community of .NET developers is
going to be a fertile ground for finding potential Access
developers, except insofar that some portion of them will be quite
smart and adaptable and have a strong understand of database
interaction that will carry over nicely into Access.

But I don't know that there will be any higher numbers of those
types of people than there always have been in any non-Access
development environment.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Terry Kreft:

The VB (classic) data bound controls/methods are buggy and to be honest a
nightmare to implement.

When I started doing VB database stuff I used the data bound controls and
spent 3 times as long (at least) working round the bugs than I do by just
doing everything unbound.

Secondhand quote from an MS rep: "Bound controls are the spawn of Satan."

Probably at least partially tongue-in-cheek... but still...
--
PeteCresswell

[jeremygetsmail]

I work for a large, well-known non-profit in New York City. We have an
Access database that we give away for free to other non-profits to
help them run their program work. It's a complex database, and is
extremely customizable. Because of that, each installation and
customization requires a knowledgeable Access developer.

We're looking to grow the community of developers, around the world,
who know Access and know our product. Because the database is
open-source (in the sense that all of our code is available for free,
and you're free to modify it), we are not looking to corral developers
and have them all work through us. Instead, we're looking for Access
developers to work on their own, with the support of the developer
community, charging their own rates, building (and building upon) their
own reputations as developers.

We've experienced a similar difficulty in finding really good Access
developers.

Jeremy

[David W. Fenton]

"(PeteCresswell )" <[e-mail]> wrote in
news:i2******** *************** *********@4ax.c om:

Per Terry Kreft:

The VB (classic) data bound controls/methods are buggy and to be
honest a nightmare to implement.

When I started doing VB database stuff I used the data bound
controls and spent 3 times as long (at least) working round the
bugs than I do by just doing everything unbound.

Secondhand quote from an MS rep: "Bound controls are the spawn of
Satan."

Probably at least partially tongue-in-cheek... but still...

Some of the people who are most ignorant of Access are employees of
Microsoft.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/