>>Thanks to Steve Stamm for his useful thread on the current health of the FoxPro commuinity: "How many are left?"
>>
>>I'm asking a related question. Most everyone here is aware of the remarkable efforts of the eTecnologia group to create a compiler from FoxPro code to dot-Net p-code.
>>
>>http://www.etecnologia.net/index.htm
>>
>>I would like to hear some gut reactions on their chances of creating a reliable (mission-capable) product.
>>
>>Do they have a shot?
>>
>>Peter
>
>30 % chance of succeeding. The odds are stacked against them and .Net is getting ready to release v4.0 soon. They're shooting at a moving target.
Hi John,

I do not understand that, maybe because I do not know enough about .Net and IL. My reasoning goes like this:

- their effort is to support (let's assume) 98% of VFP9 SP2, not a growing set functionality defined by a third party. So no moving target here.
- the compiler generates pure IL.
- IL is backwards compatible (or is IL not backwards compatible? So my 3.5 .Net 'compiled' C# won't run under 4.0? Is that what you mean?)
- So I concluded: no problem there.

What do you mean by "The odds are stacked against them"? It is an expression for which we have an equivalent in Dutch, so I more or less understand what you want to express, but what "content" is in it?

I would say that the technological effort is not the biggest problem for them, huge as it is. To me it seems that stability (of the product), marketing and setting a scope (instead of diverting to fancy extra's) are the hurdles to take.

Hope you can help me out with what you meant.

Lennert