Daniel Pineault - Devhut

For what its worth; the project I'm working on will be the last i work on using MS Access..
There are many reasons for this however i strongly believe I've held onto it simply because it's familiar...
No one likes change but historically i seem to be patching and recoding due to environmental updates/changes forced by Microsoft which are far too common and time consuming...

I've been saying that for years but I still haven't found an alternative platform that can do everything I can do in Access
Whilst I agree Access is far from perfect & the new bug of the month feature is a PITA, its still the best tool there is for my purposes.
 
@Jon
Have you contacted Dan about this? I can contact him through the MVP news group if you want me to reach out.
Pat

I emailed Daniel the day his site went down. I know others have as well. No responses so far AFAIK
I know Daniel reads emails in the MVP groups but I have never yet seen him interact with those groups
 
We had an exchange a few weeks ago. He responded personally to me rather than in the group.
 
Ditto less than a week before he took down his website. Ironically. he asked for the current link to one of my web articles which he then updated in one of his articles! It must have been a fairly sudden decision though a long time brewing.
 
I note that Daniel's YouTube channel is still running here:-

I realized early on that people do not want to pay for any code. This is not just the case for Microsoft Access, it's a prevalent attitude across the internet, where there's a pervasive belief that everything should be free. I've had moments, much like what I imagine Daniel might have experienced, where I considered quitting.

But I have so much fun doing the videos and writing the code and that's why I do it, it's not to make any money, although I've been fortunate to receive support from various members over the years, particularly from this forum, and for that, I'm truly thankful.

My advice to anyone that thinks they are going to make money developing code snippets and instructional YouTube videos is that you should think again! By all means, do it, but make sure you are doing it because you love doing it, as with anything in life really!
 
I realized early on that people do not want to pay for any code.
Too true. I have a thing ot two to say about this, but that is another thread. I have started to bring this topic up before but always thought better of it.

Once I finish this chapter of my mide-life crises bucket list, I will start it.
 
@Pat Hartman I haven't. I don't even know who owns the copyright if it was created on a website other than his own domain.
 
@Jon Let me know if you want me to connect the two of you.

I realized early on that people do not want to pay for any code. This is not just the case for Microsoft Access, it's a prevalent attitude across the internet, where there's a pervasive belief that everything should be free.
That is such a foolish notion it is hard to come to grips with.

Before the internet solved all our problems and ChatGP wrote all our code;), we relied on books. The books ranged in price between $30 and $60 which I considered to be pretty expensive back in the 90's but they usually came with CD's that included all the code and samples from the book. I used to spend hours at my favorite bookstore for technical books - Borders - and if I found a book that answered at least two of my current questions or offered a solution I knew would be useful in the future,, I bought it. The theory being, it was cheaper for me timewise to pay for the author's expertise and the CD than to spend my own time trying to figure out the solution by myself and if I didn't reward the authors for helping me, they would eventually stop. And they did. There are very few new Access books released each year and they were never actually profitable for the authors anyway, so they just stopped writing them.

Access developers, especially, seem to work alone so the internet is their source of help because they don't usually have even a single coworker to talk ideas through with. For most of my career I have had my own LLC and so worked for myself. Sure, I could get away with billing a client an extra 10 hours to solve a problem but if I could spend an hour at Borders to find the solution, I come out looking good and everyone is happy. I pay the author, the client pays me for a smaller amount of my time than he otherwise would have had to and the client thinks I'm a genius.

A lot of the examples I see out there posted for sale are less than $5 a pop. That is probably less than what you paid for coffee at Starbucks this morning. Others are significantly more expensive but even $200 for a working solution for something like simple security can save you a week's worth of coding and testing time. Your employer will probably even pay for it if you ask. Really people, do you want experts like Dan who was one of the more prolific and good content creators out there to pick up their ball and go home because you are too cheap to support their efforts?
 
I realized early on that people do not want to pay for any code. This is not just the case for Microsoft Access, it's a prevalent attitude across the internet, where there's a pervasive belief that everything should be free. I've had moments, much like what I imagine Daniel might have experienced, where I considered quitting.
do you want experts like Dan who was one of the more prolific and good content creators out there to pick up their ball and go home because you are too cheap to support their efforts?
Where do you all get the idea that Daniel removed his content because of money?

This is not the impression I have got - it seems to me that it was more because his disillusion with the MS/Access ecosystem.

Note his comment in the source code of the current page of his website which I quoted in Post #3.

I always got the feeling that Daniel was more than happy to offer his code for free, and that it paid itself back through gaining clients for his consulting work.

What did I miss?
 
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Where do you all get the idea that Daniel removed his content because of money?

Thoughts on Content Removal
I have no idea why he removed his content, but something obviously upset him! I can only imagine that he felt the same way about it as I did, and in one way, you're correct - it's not about the money.

Value Beyond Money
It's the fact that if someone is willing to buy you a coffee, or buy one of your products, in some way, they giving you a token that they appreciate what you have done. That's really what it's about and as I said, various members here over the years have done this and it's a fantastic experience.

Acknowledgement
So when I say money, I really mean acknowledgement and I think that's the essence of what has happened with Daniel.

Subjectivity
Although I can't speak to his mind, and neither can you, I can speak for my own mind and my own experience and relate that to what I see has happened with Daniel. That's all I can do.
 
The devhut.net domain still points to a server.

He may have just moved its content somewhere else, but he kept the domain. Who knows, maybe it'll be accessible soon again.
 
and ChatGP wrote all our code;)
I spent the best part of two evenings with ChatGPT writing a Google Chrome extension designed to load a Google document into the currently selected Google Drive folder. The Google document is basically a template that includes the current date and the URL of the folder it resides in. I also want it to automatically add a title, but I haven't figured that out yet. The progress has been smooth, and there seems to be a feasible path to achieving this. However, I've encountered one of those frustrating Google problems where they restrict certain actions, and ChatGPT hasn't provided a solution either. It keeps saying the same thing over and over again!

The specific error you're encountering indicates a violation of the CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) policy.

I'm going to leave it for now and have another go tomorrow evening!
 
That server still serves a page:
https://www.devhut.net

On that page Daniel writes:
It seems like he could be up to something sneaky there. The domain didn't have any content the last time I checked, specifically because you mentioned it had a hidden message in the source code. When I tried opening it, I encountered a 404 error. I also noticed that he used ChatGPT to generate the countdown, which I find quite interesting.

I suppose he achieved the attention he was seeking.
 
That server still serves a page:
https://www.devhut.net

The countdown clock is an interesting feature of that webpage, >>>28,000 days is equal to 76.66 years.<<< it looks to be counting down to DOD.... Or maybe to when Daniel plans on retiring, coming back to MS Access and messing around with it like other retirees do!
 
The countdown clock is an interesting feature of that webpage, >>>28,000 days is equal to 76.66 years.<<< it looks to be counting down to DOD.... Or maybe to when Daniel plans on retiring, coming back to MS Access and messing around with it like other retirees do!
See post #15
 

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