basic - continued

[Tero Pesonen]

On Mon, 2010-02-08 at 16:16 +0100, Knapp wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 9:49 PM, Rafiq Hajat <ipi.malawi at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Actually it's not so silly because I was attempted to emphasise the
> > lack
> >> of backward compatibility that Microsoft seems to delight in.
> >
> > You have it the wrong way around. Backwards compatibility would mean the
> > latest MS office can open older word formats, which it can. What you are
> > calling wrongly backwards compatibility is actually forwards
> > compatibility, or future proofing - Asking that a 6 year old application
> > can open a format only released in recent years. Not the same thing.
> >
> >> In
> >> addition, I also wanted to point out that Open Office is much more
> >> flexible and accommodating than its MS counterpart
> >
> > Yeah, a 6 year old application isn't as good as an up to date one. No
> > surprise there ...
> >
> > I concede the point - perhaps I have allowed my anti MS prejudices to
> > taint my suppositions. I started with Word perfect on DOs, then went on
> > to Lotus AMIPRO (remember Lotus 123?)  in Win3.11 and Lotus Wordpro on
> > subsequent windows releases. Indeed many of my best DTP designs were
> > done on Wordpro and I found these programs incredibly powerful but user
> > friendly. I was saddened when they were withdrawn and I hear they've re
> > emerged under Corel. Maybe that's why I enjoy Open Office so much. In my
> > humble opinion, Word sucks, but Excel is a superb program.
> > But I'm glad we had this debate - it has provided considerable food for
> > thought and demolished many misconceptions.
> >
> > Rafiq Hajat
> 
> I don't use it but when I did I loved it and have yet to find anything
> as wonderful as MS Access for writing really nice databases in just a
> few hours. Yes, Visual basic sucks but it worked in that case.

The problem with Access is one really needs to know the relational model
to use it properly. This is because Access does not adhere to the model
in any way. Which makes it surprisingly easy to shoot oneself in the
foot with something that appears, on the surface, to be an easy and
quick tool for building databases. Unfortunately, Access is even used in
teaching databases, because it is "appraochable." Students learn bad,
bad habits with that software. Just as they do with Word and the way it
handles styles.

Tero Pesonen

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tero-at-tpesonen.net
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