I asked a straightforward question in GQ. I was looking for some help. Did you give any? No you fucking didnt. You tried to give me a lesson in programming. Well fuck you bubba I’ve been programming for 11 years and dont need lessons from you. Let me summarise what you said. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
Back when you taught programming (btw the old adage about those who can, do, those who cant, teach applies particularly to software development in my experience) you always told your pupils to use OPTION EXPLICIT. Very good advice for VB. I always tells this to junior programmers myself. Except the question was about Access programming but I digress. Then you go on to say that you’re not sure you can do this in ACCESS. So you’re giving me advice on something you have never worked in. Well fuck you again I say.
Unless you have something constructive to say on a topic you know something about then shut the fuck up.
(this is my first pit rant and it sure felt good).
I’m confused; first you say “Waah! boo hoo! I’ve got a really difficult Access question”, then you say “I don’t need programming lesssons” Make your mind up.
Sorry chum, OttoDaFe simply gave an earnest answer that you consider to be slightly less than useful - this is not pit-worthy. It just makes you look bad.
Besides, OttoDaFe’s answer was VBA-related; you are aware that it’s VBA you’re using in Access, aren’t you?
Sure he did. His advice was probably one of the first things you’d tell someone to look for in a situation like this. A simple misnamed variable would have caused the problem you encountered. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times something like dAmount1 being written as dAmountl. OPTION EXPLICIT will help catch those.
Was math part of your programming experience? In your message, you had 25 years of combined programming experience, but now we’re down to 11. Are you planning on a rebuttal by telling me that you meant your Access development experience is 11 years? Sorry, it hasn’t been out that long. For the record, I’ve programmed for a little less than 20 years, but if I ask an Ada (or Fortran, or Lisp, etc.) question, it’s going to be a newbie question, as my 20 years don’t make me an expert in every single language that I may or may not dabble in at some point in the future. OttoDaFe had no way of knowing your Access experience level from your message.
The question was indeed about Access programming. While not wanting to question your guru-level knowledge of Access, OPTION EXPLICIT is used in that environment, so maybe you and your junior* programmers should be aware of it.
Since Access uses VBA, it was an educated guess on his part. It also happened to be correct.
If we went by those rules, this particular pit thread wouldn’t exist.
You should have saved your first for a more worthy cause.
Option Explicit is inserted by default when you create a new form in Access. Assuming you have the “Require Variable Declaration” option turned on. Anyway there are no mispelled variables in the original code segment so his advice wasnt relevant. That was my point.
The 25 years combined programming experience refers to the two other programmers and myself that have looked at it where I work. The 11 refers to myself alone. My access development experience stretches back 18 months. Prior to that i’ve spent 7 years developing in VB. So answering my question by giving me VB 101 is not a help.
As for not being able to recreate it, at least you tried. Same thing cant be said for AttoDeFa.
Well, I haven’t been programming for 11 years, but I know better than to ask a technical question about a specialized field (and, as you referred to it, about a very difficult problem) in a goddamn GENERAL BB. This is not a db board, this is not a vb board, this is not even a general programming board, this is an analsex-depression-deadcats-newbabies-weirdcrustyscabundermyballs board! If you don’t want limited answers, try a board a little more focused to what you’re looking for. (Maybe you already have, but if you didn’t get help there, I don’t know what told you the next logical step was to come here!)
Fuck, he was trying to HELP. Why don’t you relax a bit?
Yes, it is, in Access 97. It’s not in 2000. You didn’t mention which version you were using, so it’s still a reasonable assumption on his part.
As stated above, this is turned on by default in 97, but not in 2000. You stated nowhere in your message which version you used, nor whether this was checked or not.
The fact that you corrected your variable names in a subsequent message infers that you probably didn’t copy and paste your code. Therefore, even if there were no mispellings in the OP, it’s not safe to assume that there weren’t any in the actual code. Hence his recommendation was perfectly valid advice.
I saw no indication in your message of your Access-specific experience level, so it’s usually reasonable to start with advice based on common programming mistakes in that specific language. Misnamed variables is one of the most common, and one of the hardest to track down without OPTION EXPLICIT.
I thought he gave it a pretty good shot.
If you ever feel like offering him an apology, I’m sure plenty of folks would be more than happy to help you try and find the problem, including myself. All programmers, at every level, make mistakes. I’m pretty damn good at this stuff and I still make mistakes that I consider to be stupid. When someone helps (or even tries to help) me find them or point them out to me, I chuckle at my error, but I don’t bite their heads off.
When one asks for help, and someone kindly takes a moment to offer what help they can, it is considered FUCKING AND COMPLETELY SOULESS to yell at them if their help wasn’t the exact answer you wanted.
The rest of humanity cannot be expected to maintain a psychic link to your problems and their solutions. It may benefit you to learn this now.
Hey, programming guru, your credentials are not pertinent to the discussion. Ever hear of argument from authority? I don’t care if you built your own computer using parts mail ordered from Radio Shack and proceeded to write your own programming language based on the present participles of Sanskrit, there is nothing wrong with covering the basics first when answering a question. As DMC pointed out, it wasn’t even as self evident as you assumed. Miserable toss-monkey.
On behalf of all the people who do tech-support for a living who post to this Board (as well as the tech-types who don’t) who have donated their spare time and energy to help people with computer issues, I’d like to issue you a hearty “Drop Dead!”
You, like others of your ilk seem to think you have a “right” to get answers and that being an ass will somehow get you better service. Guess what? Drop dead.
The very reason that I don’t spend much time in GQ is because the people asking the questions usually seem to know more than the people they want to answer the question. The question is asked…an answer is given…the answer doesn’t suit the questioner. The person asking the question then turns around and blasts the people answering. This guy just sounds like your normal every day prick to me. I would not answer another question from him if he sent me money in the mail.
I’m guessing that you really are just projecting some extreme frustration due to a code problem that is really driving you crazy.
You need to just calm-diddly-down, dude. You posted in a general forum, not a coding or VB board. Otto tried to help. He doesn’t deserve this for taking the time to try. At this point, I wonder whether anyone on this Board will, or should ever again, help you on anything whatsoever after opening a Pit thread over something like this.
I understand code frustration, when shit that should work just plain doesn’t. I could talk for many lines about a recent fist-slamming rage induced by (float)350.00000000 being != (float)350.00000000, but there’s no point. Without throwing around more numbers, I’ve got a lot more coding experience than you. But you’ve got the wrong basis for a rant like this, and the wrong target for a rant here as well. You need to apologize to Otto, and have this thread closed.
I was going to put together a list of points in my defense, but decided not to. For one thing, most of what I could have said has been covered by other posters (thanks, guys!). And in any case, bryanmaguire would probably not have been impressed. So the hell with it.
I must say this, though. Some people have a low post count relative to time on the board. Such people only post when they think they have something useful to add (or at the very least think they can insert a little bit of levity). Whether the post is indeed useful (or funny) is, of course, up to the reader. But diatribes like Mr Maguire’s tend to discourage such input. I imagine that in the present case, he would consider that a desirable outcome–but it might discourage someone who had potentially useful input on a really important topic.
(BTW, unless Mr Maguire chooses to add together his various claims of experience, I still trump him: I’ve been in this game since 1974. :p)
Hey Bryan, here’s a phrase you might want to use-“I’m sorry”. When someone tries to help you, ya don’t snap at 'em back. Bad form. Apologizing before something completely shitstorms is a pretty good idea. I was unbanned from this very board for apologizing.
You’re new. We can chalk it up to that. Please don’t let this thread screw you over.