>>A thought for die-hard VFP developers...
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>Have you ever seen the movie 1776, a movie version of the musical staring William Daniels as John Adams?
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>If you fast forward to 6:43 into the movie, after a rousing profession of "I say vote yes, vote yes, vote for Independency," you'll hear someone say to John Adams, "Will someone shut that man up?" to which John replies, "NEVER! NEVER!" It can be seen here at 4:18 in this clip:
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>This profession by Mr. Adams would parallel my response to you here, Jos. :-) And not in a mean or rude way ... but more in a "I hear what you're saying, and I agree with everything you say, it's just that I have skills to remove that fact as an issue with Visual FreePro ... if only I can find the time, and therefore I still hold out hope (not so much for VFP, but that all of my development efforts in VFP will not be dead-ended)."
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>My hope still lies in xbase and Visual FreePro as it would remove all stale shortcomings in VFP9, enabling a robust, community-based, future-proof product which will allow VFP developers to continue moving forward so long as C and C++ compilers exist for a given architecture.
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>Now, we shall see if The Lord allows it to happen or not as He knows well my inner drives and desires to complete this project.


Hi Rick,

No offense taken :) and I am quite happy to shut-up about WinDev or any other topic anyone would like me to shut-up about.

iro your skills and Visual FreePro - I have no doubt that you have immense skills as a developer, both in VFP and C/C++ and probably more. I also have little doubt that you can build a new VFP and even add functionality to it beyond version 9. The idea that it would be open source and others could extend it still further is a good one. But …

The question I would put to you is given a world where we actually have an over-abundance of development tool choices, not a lack of them, some of which are:

1) immensely advanced,
2) have commercial backing,
3) have teams of developers working on improving/extending it,
4) many of which have large community followings,
5) many of which have large installed bases of developers,
6) conferences,
7) books,
8) web resources,
9) training programs and materials,
10) complete help systems,
11) complete tutorials and learning aids,
12) consultants for hire,
13) programmers for hire,
14) 3rd party frameworks,
15) 3rd party tools,
16) ready right now for multi-platform support
17) some of which are open-source as well

i.e. dev. tools that have large and established eco-systems supporting it - why would I choose what would effectively be a niche language without the eco-system I can tap into?

The only answer I can think of is the hope that a VFP replacement will:

1) save all my existing code, and
2) allow me to continue programming in a language I know.

Now I have been thinking about this iro tools that would extend my VFP code and skills and I come to a different conclusion. First of all I am not sure it will save all my existing code – some of our apps use many 3rd party tools, several of which are dead (e.g. DynaZip, Graphics Server, Cryptor, … ) – how will they fit in with my VFP extender? I feel that these VFP extending options might actually be a danger to a developer although it depends on your age, company structure, business model, future plans, etc.

The danger I am talking about is the trade-off that one makes to stay with VFP in some incarnation, backed by a relatively small eco-system, vs. jumping onto a new development tool which is advanced and has a large, or at least larger, eco-system. For example, we have a business which sells off-the-shelf applications (like many here). My dilemma is that to re-write would take, let's say, 1 year in a tool like WinDev. Now, someone says to me don’t re-write, just use my VFP extender tool and you’re done! And indeed perhaps I extend my current asset for another year or two. But then I am 1 or 2 years down the road and still not in a modern, growing, large eco-system development environment. I'm still in VFP with a relatively small community of developers and eco-system. My company’s core asset is still in VFP (which a potential buyer of my company may not be too thrilled about). In other words, extending my VFP asset using a VFP extender product may do as advertised (extend the life of the product) but may not be long-term advantageous to my business or company.

My advice to those who sell VFP based off-the-shelf apps would be this; keep your current VFP apps – they will work on versions of Windows (32/64) which run on desktops. Reduce work on those apps to maintenance level and only make client-keeping or sale-making enhancements. All other effort, time and resources put into building a new version of your off-the-shelf apps using a modern dev tool (you know which one I recommend and I do so because WinDev is just like VFP in the way you think about and build apps and even in the language style - so your learning curve will be much flatter than going .Net or something else. I reckon a VFP developer can learn WinDev in 3 months to a point of feeling comfortable in building apps although not knowing every function and command you regularly use off-by-heart – that would take several more months but the help is excellent). 1 year from now, or 2 or whatever, you will still have your VFP app for legacy clients and your new app in a modern dev tool supported by a large eco-system which takes you into the future.

I repeat that the above may or may not apply to someone depending on their age, company structure, business model, and other specific aspects to one’s VFP applications.