John,

Thank you for your Dabo insight, which certainly is much deeper than mine. And yes, you are right, it is the IDE that could use some additional work.

My understanding is that Dabo doesn't give you much help with Web (HTML or Smart Client) -applications, which is the main thrust of my development efforts these days, and that in itself is a turn off for me.

I applaud the effort, though, and hopefully with a better IDE in the future Dabo can become another good tool in my toolbox.

I started with dBase II, so I know all about hand coded screens, too, and would never ever want to go back to those dark days of non-productivity (from today's perspective). So, non-visual or partly visual IDE is a non-starter for me.

In the meanwhile, I am quite happy with the progress with .NET 2008 (especially the ASP design parts), as well as with the few VFP .NET efforts under way (eTechnologia, Guineau and the "Phoenix bird - foxhead" mystery system).

I don't believe VFP is at the end of the road by any means, it has just gone underground, hatching a Microsoft-less rebirth. There are simply too many great ideas and programming and data manipulation approaches in there to be lost forever into the bit buckets of history...

As far as Flex2 is concerned, my understanding is that Adobe has now been forced to play catchup with SilverLight 1.1. Adobe was asleep at the wheel for too long, and now it is forced into defensive posture, which generally is not a good position to be.


Pertti

>>I looked at Dabo a while back with great interest, but >eventually realized that it seems to be a 2-person (and busy >people at that) effort, which is moving at a glacial pace. >It has a lot of potential, but since not much has been >happening there, I moved on to other thing
>
>Not exactly accurate – but I understand your point. As in most Open Source projects one or two people take the lead. When you say “glacial pace” I think you are making a reference to the IDE because the framework is very stable and unlikely to change much. There is little to nothing I do in VFP that I can't do in Dabo. Take a look at the real world screencast http://leafe.com/screencasts/realworlddabo.html. The screencast is a demo of some of the work I'm doing with Dabo. Believe me when I say every thing I do in the screencast are the same things I do in VFP. And all the code runs on three platforms without changes (windows, Linux, Mac).
>
>I can create spreadsheets, word processing documents (mail merge, etc..). If a person really wanted to use COM objects and restrict them selfs to windows that can be done (I think it also can be done on Linux). After all Dabo is nothing more than a framework (using several libraries) built on Python.
>
>But the above can be done with several languages. What makes Dabo special is how the authors made special efforts to follow VFP's lead. Dabo has cursors, scan, a data environment for the forms, and many others VFP stuff. Dabo supports SQLite (a local data store - local like dbf's), MsSQL, MySQL, FireBird and Postgres all free. The best is how everyone is willing to help and provide code. I wrote the Postgres interface for example.
>
>What is missing is a complete IDE – like VFP's. I started with Dbase III and for many years hand coded screens. So hand coding Dabo forms seem to be a throw back. But I quickly got over that issue when I realized the power of sizers (which allow resizing of forms). Yes, it takes more time to create a form/screen. Depending on the screen (how complex) VFP is four times faster than hand coding Dabo. For simple screens the current Dabo “ClassDesigner” can match what is done in VFP.
>
>So I again say “Not exactly accurate – but I understand your point.”.
>
>.Net .Net .Net. What can I say.
>It's taken 5 years to get half the job openings that Java has. The learning curve is a year. It takes five times longer to finish a project than what it takes in VFP. It's not cross platform unless you develop with Mono. The only thing I like about .Net is VS (I like the IDE). I have written a small app in C# for a client. The client no longer is using the app. Is this a reflection on me or .Net I'm not sure. But I still have the client. As you can tell I'm not a fan of .Net. Also to tell the truth I'm no longer a fan of MS because their actions with VFP. With respect to the IDE's I also like Eclipse and Netbeans so VS is not the only IDE in town.
>
>As soon as Flex2, Actionscripts3, and Air get a better database interface I will take a very serious look at using it. Looks like they are on to something. They can create browser or desktop apps and therefore are cross platform - all from the same code.
>
>RealBasic is also not my cup of tea.
>
>Johnf