I find the idea of somehow finding a best-of-both-worlds approach fascinating. Anything that gives me those "Hey, this is really cool" moments (and makes me a lot of money) certainly deserves my support. Definitely will add a lot to both VFP and .NET. Can't wait to try it out on both sides. And if the product doesn't mature for another year or so - just gives me something to look forward to, but I want to be along for the ride.

As I've said before, my perception is that many of the people moaning about VFP reaching the 'maturity' phase of its life-cycle have never really taken advantage of the development environment they could have had in VFP for years by being penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to supporting 3rd party enhancements (and no, I don't make money from the sale of Visual FoxExpress and even if I did it would make that observation no less true) I can remember whole message threads on whether or not it was worth $30 to buy Hackers Guide.

I don't think DevExpress or Infragistics are finding their customer base so reluctant to leverage other people's expertise into a rich developer experience.



>>Hi Steve
>>
>>The flack you are getting here in sharing your excitement about the Etechnologia stuff is pretty emblematic of the kind of thinking that has turned this "community" into one that teeters on disfunction. If one morns the stagnation of VFP, one is labled a traitor, a turncoat or a spreader of fear and loathing. If someone like you expresses genuine excitement about something being done by clever people in the community to benefit VFP and give it a future, they are accused of shilling - how dare somebody try to promote a product that the developer thinks other developers should actually pay for.
>>
>>I just bought the .NET extender today as a result of your message. May it be a rousing success.
>
>I agree completely. I think I'm going to buy it this week as well. It is inexpensive and it brings a TON of added functionality to VFP (assuming it works which apparently it does). I'm really trying to switch completely to .NET, but if I can combine the 2 technologies I'm all for it!
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Tracy,
>>>
>>>Did you test the compiler or just the extender? If you tested the compiler I'd like to know what else you had in mind.
>>>
>>>I'm not trying to be impudent, I'm just honestly baffeled. Using the compiler you can compile your VFP apps and run them as .Net apps. You can compile them as assemblies and then using MonoMerge or Microsoft’s merge tool you can combine them with assemblies written in other .Net languages and using the extender you can have direct access from VFP to all the .Net assemblies. These apps can run on several platforms and if you use strict typing, your VFP code will run 3 to 10 times faster. I have tested this myself and it is truly amazing. You can even debug your applications inside Visual Studio! I just don't get what is left? Not only that, besides 100% compatibility with VFP 9 he is extending the VFP language in some great ways. You will be able to use LINQ inside your VFP code to do things like query arrays and collections. You can have tables that have 1000+ fields and are greater than 2gigs. You can run this code in the 64bit world without having to be in 32bit compatibility
>mode.
>>>
>>>What's not to love? I just don't understand why the VFP community isn't all over this...
>>>
>>>Steve