sqlvogel (7/25/2014)
I think students new to databases would be well advised to stay away from Access until they know what they are doing. It ought to be considered an advanced tool for developers and not any kind of platform for beginners to learn about databases.
I vigorously disagree with you. I 'grew up' in access, and I did it while working with it at a company, under mentors. I learned normalization, data modeling, and all the basics using a book and the software. As things I wanted to do outgrew the interface, I got into directly adjusting the SQL under the views. It took only a few weeks to be productive with it and only a few months to be reasonable with it. Admittedly I came in with a strong VBA background.
Those UI elements that you say hide things are good things. It lets the newbie concentrate on the things they're needing to learn, like normalization, and not worry about things, like 400 table ERDs (which, btw, Visio can deal with using the right add ins).
After 2 and a half years supporting and coding in MS Access, I stepped up to SQL Server well grounded in the needs of RDMS design. Now, did I butt my head against using all T-SQL, all the time? Well, of course. Nature of the beast.
Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
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