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Originally Posted by MJC922
Good post. For me when we talk about getting complete novices off the ground with programming I think back to an old book like John Smiley's Learn To Program VB6, maybe there's something more current on the order of that. VBA and VB6 have a lot of common ground between them. I started with Basic on the VIC20 and Commodore64. Being just a young kid at the time I would've benefitted a great deal from formal instruction and never got it which didn't help matters, so I can see where others are coming from. On the other hand it's a different time, I have a hunch that it may be more efficient for the aspiring computer handicapper / researcher to choose software tools first like Excel / Access and learn hands on as never before by leveraging online resources, tutorials, forums etc. I guess the big question is what do people want to do, what type of output are they looking to get out of the software.
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A bigger question would be, "Do you have some ideas that you want to try out, that you think may work well, that you think may give you an advantage over the crowd?" In that case, it is worth the effort to learn enough programming to write a basic app for your own use to test your ideas.
One of the most proficient on-track handicappers I know uses a TI-94 graphing calculator, and manually enters the data for the races she is handicapping. No data downloads, no laptop or tablet app with bells and whistles, and--most importantly--none of the weird "adjustments" made by most software apps.
