Lots of decisions to make in this new AI world and things are still emerging.

My current direction has been to move to a new IDE and away from the VBE environment for most coding tasks.

I started with Visual Studio Code or VS Code (Not to be confused with plain old Visual Studio which is a completely different pay IDE and requires licensing). VS Code is an open source project sponsored by Microsoft and is an extensible IDE with tons of plugins and features. I’ve felt a little buried by them initially.

I added a GitHub Copilot free AI plan which integrated easily with VS Code. As I got more into using this, I quickly found myself needing more AI access and hitting the limits within a few hours of using GitHub CoPilot free. So I started looking into purchasing a Pro plan of GitHub CoPilot, but this was just as they announced there would be no new signups for their entry Pro plan ($10/mo) until they reconfigured pricing and now it has been announced that it will be a pay as you go type plan.

While I was waiting even for that announcement, I decided I needed more and after discussing it with my CoPilot 365 licensed AI, it recommended I go with Cursor, which was $20 but still unlimited to a degree. Basically after you use your premium credits it transitions to simpler models transparently. So I bought a monthly subscription. I didn’t realize that this though does lock me in to Cursor’s IDE. This IDE is a fork of the open source VS Code project with their own updates. It can also use the same plugins VS Code uses and so far seems to be about the same as VS Code with the exception that the Auto AI selector for Agents works out of the box.

Then there is my Version Control system. I have been using Subversion (SVN) which uses a central repository on a server with checked out workspaces representing a single branch or part of the repository. Because all of the AI products seem to prefer GitHub and AI likes the Access Version Control plugins output much better than the OASIS-SVN output, I am switching to Joyfullservice’s Version Control plugin for Access.

I’ve been experimenting with MCP servers as well to allow Cursor to interact with Microsoft Access directly or through the Version Control plugin, both of which have MCP servers available. MCP uses the native Windows COM interface to talk to applications, so it’s ideal to allow automation for Access and the Version Control plugin.

Although switch to a new IDE and new version control system is a big step, I’m creating a new workflow around it where most of my development can be AI assisted using the Cursor IDE and transferring the code and objects from exported Version Control text files to Access binaries. Ideally, once I get the MCPs working I will have a (mostly) fully functional VBA IDE that will allow me to edit, reimport, and do a compile test all in one spot. The thing I would return to Access for would be for testing and debugging (in particular stepping through code execution).

This has already been a large change and required much testing and playing. I have so far been using both SVN and GitHub for a few select projects, and today I am planning to transition one project completely to GitHub. That will pave the way for writing a procedure for me to transition my existing projects as well as create new ones.

It’s a brave new world everyone! I look forward to continuing to trailblaze with everyone.