>I'm here at Tech Ed also, and spoke with Robert, Randy Brown and Ken Levy >about this just yesterday. They were not happy about it and I'm sure will be >discussing it with someone in management. We also discussed what I call the >Fox teams "stealth marketing" of VFP at Tech Ed. Ken Levy will be giving a >session today on moving your apps to three tier and will give a bunch of >people a look at VFP who wouldn't normally look at it. The fact that the >course title doesn't have any mention of Fox will cause many VB developers to >possibly take a look.
I would love to hear the reaction of the VB heads. The big problem with VB programmers is they generally don't have good data modeling skills since they don't have a good data modeling environment. The 3-tier stuff should really blow them away.
> Also, George Goley will be speaking here tomorrow on "Building the Best >Visual Studio Database Applications." You can bet he will be talking Fox and >VB. I think you can look for more of this type marketing from the Foxteam.
It is so good to hear. A good presentation of VFP's data power will make even the most VBish open their eyes and minds to the possibilities.
>I also sent an email to the clown that gave the "Choosing the right tool" session. I told him he was neglecting a very strong piece of VS and his course title was misleading. I also told him that if VFP was "mission critical" enough for the DOD to develop a defense logistics system for Desert Storm, it surely would handle most businesses needs.
What is his name and email address? Maybe a few more reinforcements might help get the point across.
>As for this whole deal about the continued existence of Fox, I think it will >be merged into VB within the next 5 years. If you think about it, they >started moving us to VB-like coding with version 3. Much of the coding of VB >and VFP now has a very familiar feel anyway. This is not necessarily a bad >thing though. I jumped ship on dBase when FoxBase came out because it was >twice as fast. If I can use a product that evolves from Fox and gives me more >power, what do I care if they call it Visual Widget Builder, VB, or anything >else. I'm slowly starting to learn VB, VJ++, VI and all this other stuff that >causes me to only get about 4 hours sleep a night.
I don't think the products will become one. M$ is thinking components. Data handling components and presentation components. The combination of the two would be too much overhead. Just my feeling...
Billy D.
Black Diamond Software, Inc.
Building Better Information Environments
