Perry - a rather condesending attitude if I ever heard one.

All this talk about VFP not being a great language etc is just programmer talk or shop talk. Before I set up my own consulting firm, I used to have a appox 250 person MIS shop under my direction. The MIS director reported directly to me and I used to hear similar statement that you are making about VFP but directed at other languages as justification as to why they needed to switch to this new language. They spent all their time talking about the merits of various languages and kept jumping from one technology to another that they never accomplished anything and ended up falling out of favor with their users and management. As a result the whole MIS operation was outsourced.

In my consulting I use only VFP, have been for a number of years and have no intention of using .net as I have too much business writing VFP app for the client base I have. I don't have the time to invest in another language just for the sake of learning another language. Some day maybe but not now. Small buisness want customized software and they need it without a large investment of capital. That usually mean VFP tables and as they grow migrating to Sequal Server.

My major competitors are AS400 application as I write insurance application and that industry is saturated with fax machines and AS400 applications. If you know the industry and can write good quality programs, it is very easy to sell a carrier on a new solution tied to office automation and all the bells and whistles that VFP gives a developer. .Net has never enters into the conversation with my clients. And to whomever said all VFP applications are merely a bunch of grid probably hasn't seen anything but their own work.

The application I develop are priced at between $200-250 thousand dollars which is well below what the AS400 providers are currently charging. Arguing about the merits of a language is just that, arguing. Find a niche out there and learn the ins and outs of the industry and you can do very well irrespective of the language.

IMHO VFP is still a viable language and meets a market niche out there that is very large and growing. I don't really care if VFP isn't a "real language", it is a very profitable tool for me. I just want MSFT to keep supporting it and advancing the technology and I want to give a heartfelt thanks to the VFP team for VFP9.


Gaylen



>Perry,
>
>I never stated that I do most of my work with off-the-shelf accounting. You must be thinking of someone else's comments. Actually, I do zero work with off-the-shelf accounting packages.
>
>You may not find new development going on with VFP, but you are talking about your world, not mine. All my development is in VFP. I provide solutions and those solutions are programmed in VFP.
>
>You're entitled to your opinion about VFP, but I can line up plenty of people in this forum and outside it that would differ with you on that. It's a clear, concise, powerful OOP language with a blazingly fast data engine, a great IDE, a powerful report writer, great text-handling capabilities, etc. There are other great languages out there, but for database apps VFP is a great and logical choice. Could it be better? Sure, but so could every other language and that's why we keep getting new releases of all of them.
>
>You mention respect. You might consider not insulting people if you want your opinions to be respected. Your first post to me in this thread was highly insulting and your "different plain then you" comment in your most recent post continues this habit. I think reasonable people that read this will wonder if you need to insult others in order to build yourself up. I hope you're just having a bad week, because this type of strategy is self-defeating.
>
>Russell
>
>
>>Russell,
>>
>>If you would just make comments that are based in reality, I think you would get a lot more respect.
>>
>>Such as the lack of new development with VFP. I don't recall the details, but you stated you do most of your work with off the shelf accounting. I would expect that the majority of your work then is maintenance, or adding a feature here or there. I am working with accounting apps now also. Strictly maintenance. There just isn't too much new development going on with VFP.
>>
>>VFP is just not a truly great language. It is A LANGUAGE. If it was truly a GREAT LANGUAGE, there would be many programmers complaining. I work or are around many Java or .Net programmers. Not a peep from any of them about the lack of a local data engine.
>>
>>Also, I am not sure about the statement made here many, many times that VFP developers are better then others for whatever the reason of the day is. There are never, ever interesting discussions about advanced oop features here. Or such things as UML, System design etc. The closest is Rich S. and Walter going round about strong typing. But to me Walter's argument is totally based on theory. I've always been pleased by the compiler alerting me to errors if I fail to initialize a variable properly. And has been stated to Walter by Martin, there are some advanced oop designs that require strong typing so you can properly make use of polymorphism.
>>
>>There are others who are interested in working on more advanced IT projects then app maintenance. These days that requires Java or .Net experience. And also a team of developers. You are attempting to discuss technology with folks who are on a totally different plain then you. And unfortunately, VFP has always been looked down at by other programmers. There are reasons why you don't here a roar over the demise of VFP. More like a little peep in the grand scheme of things.
>>
>>PF