SURVEY: How did you learn the structure of VBA?

[mainerain]

I've learned VBA from various online training video's, Google and of course this excellent forum. I wish there was a local instructor that taught this.



I know that just working at it is important but what helped you understand the syntax and structure?

[Micron]

what helped you understand the syntax and structure?

Obviously practice is important and I'd say it is what drives getting syntax right. To me it's more like learning any foreign language in that you just have to commit its structure to memory. Many of the fundamentals (e.g. knowing whether or not DoCmd is an object, method or property; knowing what collections are and that they tend to be zero based and other such things) only comes through practice. Then again, if you're a genius and understand and retain everything you read then none of that applies. Helping out here also tends to keep things fresh when practice is otherwise lacking. I'd say it's what keeps me at a level of 3 or 4 out of 10 - if I may be allowed to be so conceited.

[DittoBird]

The basics? The usenet newsgroup comp.databases.ms-access in the mid to late 90s. I continued to use it through the 2000s up to about 2007 or 8. Guys like Albert Kallal, David Fenton, Michael Kaplan, Arvin Meyer (I think), Tony Toews and others helped me a LOT. I know I am forgetting some.

Above all, Marshall Barton was very patient with me in suggesting I use VBA instead of a very cumbersome query by form and then helping me through it.

They were a really great group of people. Compared to some of the fecking dinosaurs who yelled at everyone who asked a question on the 4 (I think) Oracle groups, CDMA was a wonderful and friendly group.

And I continue to learn, sometimes relearn, in exactly the same manner you described, MaineRain.

[kd2017]

I haven't. Intellisence, these forums, stackoverflow, and google for the win!

I constantly refer to allen browne's stuff for general direction. http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html

Speaking of intellisence, I really wish the vba ide would get an overhaul... or we could use VS code or something.

[ssanfu]

I was in the University and switched focus to an Electronics Technology program. Started learning programming writing machine language programs (in Octal) on a Remington Rand "Athena" military computer that was taken out of service in 1953. Then progressed to assembly language programs on an IBM 360-70 (using punch cards ).

On to an Apple II - Apple Integer Basic & Apple Floating Basic, then to IBM XT Basic. Taught myself Turbo Pascal; I can read Fortran, Cobal, C, C++ and a couple of other languages (although not fluently and I struggle with OOP and Inheritance).


I have found if you understand the steps to solve the problem, it is easy/easier to a write program - but you understand the structure and syntax of the language.