>>>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
Seems to me that 98% compatibility will be extremely difficult for them to achieve. The .net feature set is growing with every release and people who are keeping abreast of the mainstream change wouldn't use it. The only people that woueld probably consider it is the die-hard fox guys. My point is that if you are going to learn .Net, learn c# or VB.net, don't hope for a vfp.Net. Even if they achieve their goal, what use will it be to use a language that has no support for generics or reflection, let alone silverlight or wpf.
