Programming

What is Recursive Programming?

When writing programs, it’s often necessary to perform repeating operations on collections of items such as customer orders or invoices.  Often, you can just iterate through the collection or count the items to determine how many times to perform the operation.  When working with a hierarchy of items such as...

Using Visual Studio to Manage Your Data

(This article was updated in August 2018 for use with Visual Studio 2017.) Moving Beyond Microsoft Access I’ve written a lot about Microsoft Access over the years and still believe it’s a great training ground for people who want to learn to design database applications. Its user-friendly interface provides...

Getting Started in Software Development: Part IV – Long Term Strategy

In the last chapter, I talked about some of the current options when it comes to getting started in the programming field. I mentioned several development tools that you can get familiar with to decide what path you want to take as a software developer but getting started is...

Getting Started in Software Development: Part II – Finding a Career

You’ve probably heard people talk about how we’re living in the Information Age with an emphasis on how much information there is to process from all different directions. This is certainly true and it can be a challenge for the average person, especially if they were born even a...

Getting Started in Software Development: Part I – More than Writing Code

Ask a lot of people about the requirements to be a computer programmer or software developer and they’ll probably start talking about computer science degrees and years of formal training. Those things don’t hurt but they’re not strictly necessary, either. I personally do not have a degree aside from the...

Should I become a computer programmer?

So, I was glancing at Reddit first thing this morning and saw the following question ... I'm exploring the possibility of being a programmer, wondering what there is to it, and why you enjoy your job. A very articulate high-school student was thinking about career choices and wanted to know what...

On software design …

In my upcoming book, Your First Guide to Database Design, my goal is to provide a clear guide for users at all  levels of experience on how to organize their data into an efficient database, regardless of whether they’re using a desktop database like Microsoft Access or a network software...

Using Typed Datasets in Visual Studio

If you’ve worked with Visual Studio or .NET for long, you’re probably familiar with the System.Data.DataSet class which enables you to create a collection of data in memory, often retrieved from an SQL database. Within a dataset object, you can have a series of related DataTables that categorize the data....