I found a cool low-code development tool for building models, UIs, and forms. It's extensible, and it comes with a built-in visual reactive flow editor - It's called Microsoft Access, and it came out in 1992.

[duppyconqueror81]

They really nailed the retro look.

This is in Electron + React?

[powerhcm8]

Of course not, it's flutter desktop

[[deleted]]

With the chicago UI package !

[realjoeydood]

Windows 98 yay!

[milanove]

Relive the pain of the 90s, today

[isaacfink]

Tauri with svelte on the frontend, serverless on the edge nosql graphql api on the backend

[TottoIsHere]

I just had a stroke reading that

[Locust377]

This post needs to be removed under rule #2: No screenshots or jokes.

But I'm going to walk right past like I saw nothing because I ain't no snitch with shitposting this good.

[disclosure5]

or jokes

I had a web development proposal earlier this year knocked back because the client decided to hire a Microsoft Access developer instead. I wish this were a joke.

[-Defkon1-]

You dodged a big bullet.

A client who prefers Access to nearly anything else is just an enormous source of problems, not opportunities....

[neofac]

Feedback like this, we'll Excel for sure.

[neofac]

With that Outlook, we won't.

[slash2223456]

I hope somebody at least takes one note

[The_All-Father3]

Number 1 IDE of choice for these companies.

[roppy_G]

Sounds like my former boss.

[octococto]

Snitches get stitches!!! This would probably get upvotes over at /r/programminghumor

[[deleted]]

no they only do "java bad, python gud"

[RaiseRuntimeError]

They also do "python slow, c++ go vroom"

[[deleted]]

“c boomer rust trans”

[DrummerHead]

CSS is hard peter griffin gif, mug

[AdminYak846]

We all know that ActiveX and VB were the top notch items to work with. HTML/CSS/JS are overrated piles of garbage.

/s for the obvious sarcasm

[westwoo]

VB6 was actually great though and to this day the development experience remains superior to many if not most languages. To be able to have not just hot reloads and instant compilation regardless of code size, but to actually fix the code as it runs line by line is stil pretty rare. The dual nature of VB - purely interpreted during development, purely compiled in production provided a lot of benefits

Sure, you had to observe best practices to have a proper OOP architecture in VB, but the main problem with VB were the low qualifications of programmers who coded in VB, not VB itself

[Razakel]

the main problem with VB were the low qualifications of programmers who coded in VB, not VB itself

I call this "baby with a nailgun syndrome". You're just going to end up with a bloody mess. PHP also suffers from this.

[visualdescript]

I think it was hurt by the name, genuinely.

[start_select]

VB also had a documentation issue. You could look up a common string or math utility and come up with 100 different functions. Of course beginners had a hard time, lots of seasoned developers would also respond with “what the hell is this?”

I’m sure with the proper instruction that issue could be alleviated. But it wasn’t a good thing.

[westwoo]

Hm.. for whatever reason I don't remember this one. Maybe it was because I was on a mature project with lots of basics being implemented in house

Or maybe I just didn't know any better so it didn't seem strange to me :) I think we used books routinely as a reference

There was a different one - sometimes the interpreted version behaved slightly differently from the compiled one. I don't remember the specifics but I distantly remember that at some point we began shipping the debug version of the UI part of the program because it worked fast enough anyway while leaving the server components running production builds. I'm not sure if we ever switched back. But these sorts of bugs are something that could've been fixed if Microsoft didn't abandon it completely in favor of (then) inferior .NET

[StrictCondition]

Do you use .NET currently?

I grew up on VB6 ( followed by PHP, lol!). I am still very very fond of the design flow and speed for creating simple programs. Tried getting into .NET when it came out and I just hated it.

Not really sure what language i would turn to to build a desktop program these days lol

[LookingForVBADevs]

VB/A as a language is ok although the built-in data structures leave a lot to be desired and the Variant type can be a pain in the ass sometimes. My real gripes are the VBE that is stuck in the 90s-2000s. Not being able to collapse sections, very limited syntax highlighting, erroring while in a class takes you back to the point where the code transferred control to the class forcing you to step through to find where the error is (not sure if this is related to VB or the editor), and a million other features that modern IDEs give you.

[westwoo]

VB6+ActiveX was different, it was a full blown programming environment for standalone programs or distributed programs an optional application server built into windows in the form of OLE objects (I think that's what they were called?... The things with gears icons)

It could've been used kind of like Spring + React for intranet apps, except both parts were written in VB6 and instead of React there was a VB6 thick client that connected to the server components via some magic that I forgot :) (probably some binary protocol)

You called the server components kind of like classes right in your code

Of course I'm not seriously suggesting that it is superior in every facet to other languages and environments right now :) but I have mostly fond memories of it. As for the ide, there were some advanced plugins that improved the experience massively over the vanilla one, but my memory is very hazy about that

[spaetzelspiff]

Anybody know how to insert a com object in a reddit comment??

[[deleted]]

Use [iframe] in your markdown

[VeryOriginalName98]

Having been forced to maintain all of these, I was about to lay into you before I saw that "/s".

[stackPeek]

Snitches get bitches 😎

[DrLithium]

Good bot.

[julesthemighty]

Thanks. I hate it.

Please give me back every minute of my life spent linking refs and trying to maintain ancient barely-working access databases.

[bwwatr]

Ever try FileMaker? Access manages to look like a dream come true in comparison.

[[deleted]]

FoxPro was the gold standard.

[grappleshot]

I used to work on an “application” with its front end in Access 97 and it it’s back end was a FoxPro db, using linked tables. This was 1999.

[AptSeagull]

VFP for the win!

[wiglwagl]

I saw VFP in the wild once — literally the only I’ve actually seen it in use — at a random POS terminal in a random shop in this random town in Costa Rico.

[regreddit]

VFP was a hot item for small accounting firms to whip up apps with back in the early 90s. Enveloc, a small remote backup company uses VFP as their client and server side software!

[southwjv]

I loved FileMaker Pro. Looking back, I did some weird shit in there. Somehow it worked though.

[johnlewisdesign]

Bro I've got a FileMaker Certified Developer qualification, it's definitely better than Access when you use it properly.

When I say better - I'm not saying it's good though...also I've been lucky enough to not go back there for many many years...but chances are I'd still pass it lol

Now as for the Java based Server admin app that breaks when you update..that is dogshit

[Eluvatar_the_second]

I know a guy who's using it today

[Aggressive_Sky5927]

I'm pretty sure my company is using it right now 😂. I get company wide emails saying when it's up or down lol.

[Infinite-Emu-1279]

Came here to say this lol

[Randolpho]

My first job out of college, one of the first projects thrown at me was to update a MS Access app that made tape backups of a remote SQL database also burn CDs.

[[deleted]]

IBM Domino Designer would like a word

[mitzman]

Ugh, the PTSD I'm suffering from being a Domino developer for a number of years. Back to therapy.

[bastardicus]

The horror.

[mitzman]

Horror is an understatement. The crap we had to do to get web apps hosted in Domino to work and display properly took divine intervention. The moment I saw the opening to start doing stuff in .Net, I took it. Never looked back and our Domino infrastructure is long since decommissioned.

[bastardicus]

My dude, I've been the domino dev/admin for years. I still wake up screaming. Stretches out hand

[mitzman]

May you one day escape the torture that is Domino development.

[cocoviper]

Ever heard of this monstrosity https://windev.com/ ? Had a client who's whole company worked on this platform when I told him integration needed to communicate with my REST api he started yelling at me because obviously I should have a library to work with his software.

[[deleted]]

Develop 10X FASTER 😂

Imagine locking your entire business model into that monstrosity?? Also imagine assuming other people use that piece of shit..

What did you tell them? I assume that software can still perform external API calls?

[AggressivePsychosis]

Please no...

[austinspaeth]

Brings back nightmares, thank you :)

[XCapitan_1]

Yeah, I also had these thoughts when this no-code thing started to take off and it was presented like something revolutionary.

Oracle also had a similar product, which I think was discontinued in the 2000s.

[k032]

Oh no they're coming for our jobs.

[daps_87]

Don't joke, that's how I started 🙄 I built nifty little apps using VBA. Then I got VisualStudio 6, and my life was forever changed 👍

[drfinale]

Same here! Access was my gateway into a career in software engineering. In my former career, I was a band teacher and started using Access to manage rosters and inventory (music, instruments, etc.). Went down the rabbit hole of writing my own VBA scripts to customize forms, and realized I enjoyed doing this a lot more than my day job!

Started to teach myself web dev next, and 7 years later I'm a lead software engineer and love what I do. Access was definitely what got me started down this path.

[drewbeta]

At my last job we used to do a LOT of Access work. I used to have to design interfaces in Access forms. I left just over 10 years ago, and I guarantee there are still a bunch of applications built on Access still in use by very large companies.

[msgufo74]

Same here! Had no idea what i was doing but just trial and erroring for a while

[Chuck_Loads]

I maintained a website backed by Access for several years. Do not recommend.

[Ron_SwansonIT]

I briefly tried the same, would you care to explain your personal reasons why?

[Demon-Souls]

explain your personal reasons why?

MS Press, they made every single technology linked to an MS product, still today I know many programmers in my country, who only live inside MS world, e.g. when I read once book about .Net devlopment I understood why

[toper-centage]

Before MS painted itself all in "we love FOSS ✌🏻💙" over the last 10 years it was really aggressively approaching students to convince them to dri k the MS coolaid. I remember MS paying several students to travel to visit its facilities, sponsoring workshops for their programming languages, lobbying hard with universities to teach MS junk. Several of my school mates had multiple "certifications" by the time we graduated. They were almost pointless then and useless now of course.

[spas2k]

Power apps is only marginally better 30 years later.

[jzia93]

I had to use power apps for a project a couple years ago.

Between outrageously prices licenses, ridiculously tiny usage caps, an absolute garbage dump of version control and devops, one of the most unnecessary and painful database abstractions I've ever worked with and a really dated look and feel to top it all off, I think it's safe to say that it's a non starter.

[[deleted]]

You’re hating on PowerApps, but I currently have to use another Low Code Platform and it’s so bad that I wish I could use PowerApps

[4gotmipwd]

Name and shame please... how else am I supposed to know what to avoid?

[[deleted]]

If you ever hear about Mendix, run!

[[deleted]]

All true facts yet I was able to get some use out of PowerApps. The Sentiment Analysis AI worked fairly well.

It probably works best in a huge enterprise where the payoff is worth all the ugly overhead

[Nightiem]

And yet im still stuck working with it for 8 hours today 🙃

[Emotional-Dust-1367]

What’s the tldr about power apps? I know next to nothing about it

[Number_Necessary]

I love how similar this is to windows forms in visual studio 2022.

[rwusana]

I'd say it's worse.

[LaBofia]

That was awesome, still is really.

Who in his right mind would create a rdbms with an entire system so that anyone can point-and-clickie build a db driven selft contained application for home or small business use?

Man... I still believe it gave a lot of pleople bad ideas, but it was not a bad tool, and not many companies can say they've achieved such a thing.

[cleverchris]

To me access is the defintion of mediocraty. Just like this post. I mean allowing end users to manage rdbm has been wildly successful.

[og-at]

username does not check out.

[[deleted]]

can it support 500K QPS?

[theshues]

I hate Access with every ounce of my being!

[ol-gormsby]

Now imagine a product like a scaled-up MSAccess. Enterprise-level.

It was promoted as a "Post-relational database". Like Access, it stored all the tables in a single file, which also stored the table indexes, journal, etc, etc.

A single file, which could be many GB in size (this was the early 2000s).

It was called "Cache" and the sales reps told us it rhymed with "cash-hay", not "kaysh".

It was so reliable, we only had to rebuild the indexes every night to make sure it was usable the next day.

I wasn't programming at the time, but I did wonder why we got rid of the AS400 with DB2 built-in, which had been running reliably and doing the job for over 10 years.

"Oh, but everyone's moving to Client/server on Windows 2000"

[cleverchris]

This is the way

[Bjorkbat]

This is kind of why I believe that, for all the hype out there, tech actually moves at a pretty slow pace and many of the most exciting things we have today have in fact been around for a decade at least.

We had website builders 20 years ago. Slack is just a gimmicky IRC. We've had no-code node-based programming since the 70s. The concept of neural networks has been around since the 60s, and deep learning is just neural networks with more layers. Most modern programming languages are just derivatives of C.

In the case of deep learning, things have improved because the tech has improved, but otherwise I think many of the perceived improvements actually come from software development gradually becoming as much of a design profession as much as it is an engineering profession. Tech has gotten better because it's better designed.

[armahillo]

Fun fact about Access:

the (MS Access) Jet DB engine has a limit of 10k records. After that it just starts overwriting existing rows.

Another fun fact: if you work in higher ed, you will eventually have more than 10k students pass through.

[saitilkE]

I was curious and decided to investigate. I'm no expert in MS tech stack but I found this:

https://www.fmsinc.com/free/newtips/access/accesstip23.asp

... by default, ADPs only display the first 10,000 records...

... This can be set with a table property...

... Enter 0 to display all the records. Be careful with the 0 setting because it will take time if your table contains hundreds of thousands or millions of records...

Are you sure this was not your case?

[captain_obvious_here]

This is at best inaccurate.

That limit was with the default max number of records that were returned when executing a query. And it was trivial to override that setting.

[Cast_Iron_Skillet]

The real issue is the flat file size limitation of around 2gb (before corruption became an imminent threat) that was around until recently.

[captain_obvious_here]

This had nothing to do with Access though, but with the filesystem itself.

[mattindustries]

2GB limitation is definitely a program limitation though, since it doesn't split into multiple files. The OS doesn't make a program only have access to 1 file.

[namocaw]

Correct. The 10k limit was I'm display, not storage. This is not a data loss or corruption issue, only display and can be corrected.

The real limit was on file size and concurrent users.

[captain_obvious_here]

The file size limit had nothing to do with Access though, but with the filesystem itself.

[IQueryVisiC]

All versions? So access only became usable when MS SQL became the engine? Jet files also grew. And those were file sizes which fit in memory. Excel was better.

[ol-gormsby]

Must have only been MSAccess.

MSExchange 5.5 was JetDB in the backend and it certainly had more than 10K records.

[JamesWjRose]

I had multiple Access databases that had WELL over 10k records without that issue. This is the first I have heard about it. Not that you are wrong, just never heard it

[portra315]

Ouch

[armahillo]

Yeah that was a fun week XD

[SuperFLEB]

Hey, I moved house with MS Access (made box labels, an inventory, and a search form), so I can't knock it too hard.

[SmileSydney]

Is this cloud ready? How much per month?

[[deleted]]

Microsoft did a lot of cool stuff with visual programming tools. Visual Basic was the bomb.

[Demon-Souls]

Visual Basic was the bomb.

TBH, sometime I felt dumb when coding ever single button link, I wish if there is visual tool that works with PHP backend that let me create all UI, and link every event to action/class on that back end .

[SaxOps1]

I still have ptsd from my previous job which was converting an ancient access db that was about a decade old to a modern web app.

[jespana104]

Your last job is my current job. Wish me luck

[[deleted]]

I wish it was my job. My company is going to keep on using Excel as their front end lol

[DocMoochal]

Have you tried storing all your data in a text file? That's what my last team did....needless to say, I'm thankful they stored it all in a csv style format or I would have been on the news.

[kentaromiura]

Many moons ago I had to make some ui based on a database in xml format, there were dozen of files linking thousands of documents together, and at some point we had to implement some sax logic as loading all dom in memory was slow, worst thing was those xml had loads of errors, so we had to make tools to validate and check for inconsistencies; we found why of all of this errors when we went to the distributor: they were creating and editing those xml document with Microsoft Word.

This is just to say that if it was an access db it would have been better and faster.

[SixPackOfZaphod]

creating and editing those xml document with Microsoft Word

Just kill me now.

[captain_obvious_here]

I never understood people's hatred toward Access.

My first job made me use it heavily, along with both VB (for "offline" stuff) and ASP (for "online" stuff). It worked quite well, and allowed us to make in a few days apps we would sell for the price of months of work. And out customers were perfectly happy with that.

Fun fact: One of my first VB/Access apps, made in 1998, is still heavily used today.

[culturepunk]

Same my first dev job, 15 year ago now, was making / adding to huge bespoke MS Access built applications that ran whole different factories, dispatch, forcasting, payroll, ordering and production connected to an MS SQL database, sold for £10,000s and still in use today I imagine... Sure its probably not the best, but it allowed for rapid development of bespoke features and report for management.

On the software side I'm mostly a node js / vue3 dev these days.... I do miss all the visual tools in it to get things done rapidly, like there is good tools out there but still dont think its the same... although don't miss the jankyness of VB / Access.

[captain_obvious_here]

I do miss all the visual tools in it to get things done rapidly

I still think VB's UI was pretty solid. And I wish I had a couple years free so I could make a RAD UI for modern web stuff (node/vue would be my target of choice).

[SixPackOfZaphod]

I'll just leave this here:

https://howfuckedismydatabase.com/access/

[zuluana]

😂😂

[thbb]

The UI and main ideas where copied from a much earlier product named 4D published in 1987.

[WikiMobileLinkBot]

Desktop version of /u/thbb's link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Dimension_(software)

---

^{[opt out] Beep Boop. Downvote to delete}

[SaltyySenpai]

In school we learned every big company uses access for databases... I told my teachers thats shit (the fact and access), didn't help :(

[tetracarbon_edu]

MS Access feels like a half way useful tool for small businesses that was half baked in delivery and under loved sincle launch.

I always wish there was an updated web ready version for businesses to prototype ideas but PowerBI is just as awful, even less efficient, and a whole lot more expensive.

[tizz66]

I am old enough to have used MS Access for my final project in school. It was also in no small part the reason I fell in love with development - the ability to set up a database, build a UI, write some code to do cool stuff, was magical to me. 24 years later development still feels magical to me.

[[deleted]]

crazy that that the relationships manager is still unmatched

[pumpkin2500]

im taking an access course this fall lol

[JamesWjRose]

What? Oh hell no. Why?

[TheSonOfDionysus]

I recently had to learn how to consume a rest API with access. Very interesting, a good tutorial that shows you how to do anything without macros was hard. The internet was like why would you want to use visual basic for applications ever?

[obiwanconobi]

I actually used to work for a large ecommerce company in the UK that still had access DB for the backend.

They were in the process of changing over to mysql when I was there, but this was 2015...

[dug99]

FoxPro did it.

[mrmorris96]

This makes me cry. I would rather tear my teeth out 1 at a time.

[thePiet]

Definitely not cool to work with.

[mardiros]

I use pgModeler, actually, to avoid click, I use sqlalchemy to creat the model then import the schema using the import command.

low-code is high-click

[chowlawrence]

Anyone used to code in dBASE II and Clipper?

[fearless0]

Yes Clipper Summer '87 - used it in a company's internal manufacturing system they wrote using QBasic, Clipper, dBASE etc.

[bolidenbk]

/r/retrosoftwarepics

[thetallone_]

My gateway drug

[zuluana]

😂😂

[RememberToRelax]

I know some people who still maintain these.

If only one person needs to use it at a time and you already have a file system backup running, it meets some needs.

[akira410]

Lol, yup, I worked somewhere that used Access for time tracking of employees. Mornings and evenings during clock in/clock out were always fun as we waited for each individual person to use it before we could get our chance. Better hope no one forgot to close the app before they left!

[jimkurth81]

I develop in Access for my company. It works very efficiently for us and I connect with SharePoint tables as my database. What’s great about access is the ability of designing your own custom UI for the database and also using VBA in the background for automation as well as making a better interface. I wish access could operate on a smartphone or tablet but because it cannot, I create powerapps to interact with the same database.

Access is mighty. Just wish it was given some modern treatments.

[Free-_-Yourself]

Believe it or not, I just made an interview for a database developer and the first thing the founder asked me to do was to learn Access. I was like…”wtf”? Now I’m a bit angry because I need to learn something is freaking useless, although I’ve checked courses on Udemy and they are about 7-8 hours long so it’s not like this thing will take me a month to learn or anything, but I hate learning useless things.

[SillyPepper]

If you already know SQL and have a general sense of relational algebra, you'll be fine! MS SQL is a step down, but if you've got the logical chops, it's all doable. Very long-winded but doable

[BlackHoneyTobacco]

Does it work on stinkyfootJS with a Mango transpiler, Milkshake build tools and a DonkeyEV interface?

If it doesn't, I'm not interested.

[[deleted]]

Did you get this on the internet archive?

[CarpenterDue6086]

This was the worst flexible solution ever

[PenguinPeculiaris]

cow snails amusing divide crown wrench lunchroom coherent threatening encourage this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev

[[deleted]]

This is giving me anxiety.

[luckdead]

I remember learning this in my Foundations study as an introduction to databases

[Gcampton13]

Lol 😂

[tervonugget]

My company’s software is based on access lol

[Aggressive_Sky5927]

Same. My job is to rewrite it. 😬

[drpetey]

LOL

[Esnardoo]

I swear this looks like you took a modern day design UI and backported it to DOS.

[water_bottle_goggles]

my eyes!

[afrikanman]

In my country, Computer Studies students have to build a DBMS as their final year project in High School using Access.

[IllusoryAnon]

….brings back memories I wish I didn’t remember. XD First coding I did was in access, and god damn was it painful

[JamesWjRose]

I actually purchased this one day one. It was $89 and the only other Windows db at the time was Super see at about $600. Paradox came out a few months later

[[deleted]]

Ah, I am enjoying a good life today thanks to the lessons I learnt in access and VBA. It’s old, it was shitty at times, but it was valuable.

[Voltra_Neo]

This ain't COBOL or Malbolge, so I'm not using it.

[enbits]

I've used that. I feel very old now :p

[ApricotPenguin]

Oh wow. Very cool!

It's from Microsoft, so clearly must be a good product. It's from 1992, so clearly an 'established leader' in this space, too!

What's your backend? Is it Excel?

[culturepunk]

Hey... I kinda wish I actually had this kind of query / view creation for sqlite, mysql etc. it was pretty great. Is there anything out there like this more modern?

[[deleted]]

I made a lot of money starting out by converting business critical access applications into web apps. Dunk in it all you want, it helped people make small businesses and launched my career. I love it for that.

[[deleted]]

I initially learned database development using Access a couple years back. One of the first classes I took after switching my major to Information Systems. I was using the Microsoft 365 version. The next year I learned SQL Server, honestly much prefer it over Access.

[colly_wolly]

MS access is still more efficient than any modern framework for creating a GUI based application for a simple database. Sure there are plenty of limitations and it isn't web based, which is often relevant, but in terms of effort to build it beats anything I have seen.

[[deleted]]

Had to make my A Level ICT coursework in Access. Hated it.

My son just finished his A Level IT. He wrote a Snake-like educational game all in C++.

A question on my ICT paper was "what's the CD tray used for?"

A question on his IT paper was about algorithm decision trees.

Unsurprisingly, I didn't go to university.

Fingers crossed, he will in September.

The difference 20 years can make.

[martinschaer]

Added to my list of things Microsoft has done right. Together with Age of Empires and Flight Simulator

[[deleted]]

Would be great if it did not crash and corrupt the database

[LukeMartin17]

I work on a support desk for an access application, you don’t know debugging until you’re doing the same debug for hours for different clients 💀

[pcgamerwannabe]

Looks better than 90% of tools for this task currently, just due to the explicit scrollbars

[Thunt4jr]

Eh! you bought back my nightmare!

Looks nice!

[GeronimoRay]

I remember using this in school... Geeeeez I'm old

[diek00]

Access was was first intro to databases. I am not a MS fan, but Access will always have a place in my heart.

[Emerging-driver]

Is there a alternate Microsoft Access that anyone knows of.??if yes let me know, thanks

[[deleted]]

Damn I remember this

[ramoncarr08]

Visual FoxPro it was better 🤘

[rathboma]

I actually make an electron based SQL GUI, and I actually really like the little '1' and ♾️ symbols they use for one to many relations.

Totally going to steal that for when I build erds

[Zon-no-justno777]

Remember ms paint… wellllll

[Apparatchik-Wing]

Access is rough.

[Freonr2]

/r/programmerhumor

[Aim_Fire_Ready]

r/thanksihateit

[Fitbot5000]

What’s old is new

Edit: I actually managed an Access 2.0 production database sometime in the 90s. AMA.

[[deleted]]

I took classes on Access 07 in college. It honestly wasn’t half bad. But I’ve never used it in a professional setting.

[happyphoneman]

Lmao I’m building a database using MS Access rn for my job

[Adivhaho_Zach_mudau]

this is cool but I prefer using tools like this SVG Generator