Access self doubt

[philfer]

Hi,

I have read a few books on Access development and felt I had quite a good grip on both Access and Access VBA (I have used excel vba before).

In a new job I was asked to do something on Access and found I was struggling.

Am I stupid? Or have other people found it hard to go from theory to practice (even recent theory)

I am struggling with crippling self doubt so be kind (but truthful!)

Phil

[Imdabaum]

It's part of working. You break through it. Keep hammering look for the go to guys and don't be affraid to ask for help. Even if they don't know VBA they may have a better grasp on the practice of the theories and they can explain more to you. I've been doing this 3 years. Took about 8 months off and got thrown back into it and had the same doubts as I was thrown into a different kind of project. Just keep at it.

[OTWarrior]

I learnt from experimenting with other people's code. look at the KB on this site. There are loads of usual functions and good pieces of code, often with good explanations of what part of the code does what. If you alter this code and see what different results you get, you will learn what code does what.

[OBP]

I have been creating Access databases for over 10 years and I am still learning. Look at the Forums and ask if you can't figure something out in about an hour, as you get in to diminished returns otherwise. After all after you ask you can still carry on trying if you want, or better still move on to something you know you can do that still needs doing and then come back to it.
Another good technique is to describe your problem to someone else (they don't even need to know Access) just going over it can trigger an idea or they ask one of those "stupid" questions that is the key to the problem.

[CreganTur]

I agree wwith everything that's been said in this thread, but I want to add a couple of things.

If you're reading a book and not hand-typing all of the examples, then you are doing yourself a disservice. Writing out the code for the examples and actively following along will help greatly with retention and understanding.

Once you have a very firm grasp on VBA, I have found that learning a new language can help you get a better understanding of OOP and other major programming disciplines that will make you a better coder. I would highly reccomend Head First Labs' C# book- it has the best chapters on creating custom classes that I have ever read.

Google and forums are your best friends as a developer- use them often!

[Imdabaum]

If you're looking for good OOP books for beginners is "Design Patterns Explained - A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design", Second Edition by Alan Shalloway & James R Trott

One of the hardest things for me to learn was to design the structure before I started coding. This book is helping me to clean that up. I still have a tendency to jump in and slap some code down. But I'm getting better. I hope.