Tuvia,

I feel overwhelmed these days by all the choices we have and all the complexity of some of the modern approaches available. One look at the JavaScript space and the complexity involved to build true JavaScript client applications (SPA's) will make the best of us cringe at the hideous amount of dependencies, technologies and general understanding required to make all that work and fit together.

Solutions in the past have been easier - simple as that, but at the same time we've gotten way more power out of modern solutions. Visual FoxPro was a great tool in its day, but it's actually a pretty terrible tool when it comes to being a Web server. yes it works for quite a few scenarios but no-one will EVER build something like Twitter or Yahoo on it - it simply could never scale to that level. Other solutions can do that however as they are designed for it.

These days newer tools have to do a lot more and provide higher scale and flexibility to address different needs. With it technology has changed to reflect these changed expectations.

The other thing to remember is that with FoxPro YOU are the expert. You've used this tool for 20 years (or whatever), you know it inside out, you know all the tricks. That's your thing! Now imagine somebody in a newer technology with the same level of skill. To you some things may seem more code intensive, but to them that may not mean anything - the productivity is what matters.

I've said it before and I say it again. If you are at the top of your technology and you've put in your time, the amount of code you write between different tools/technologies will not vary drastically. The code I wrote with FoxPro on typical business systems at the end of that cycle, didn't look that drastically different than the .NET code I write today for business systems. Similar logic through similar business process/framework logic looks similar no matter which approach you take!

IOW, before you dismiss other technologies as overly verbose or convoluted make sure you're comparing apples to apples. Don't compare say a 101 type article to a senior architect level code :-)


+++ Rick ---


>Today I feel we find ourselves in a programming mess. New tools constantly come out, young developers cry for more bleeding edge components, and we add layers and layers of uncessary work. We have forgotten the point of programming - to make as efficiciently as possible an application that will the needs of the indentifed user. No wonder the average end user often feels befuddled - we make
work for ourselves and cloud it with obscure reasoning.
>
>What drove this home was the issue of Code magazine I just received in the mail. CODE magazine is well written; my examples could come from any similar publication. but let's use this as an example.
>
>One article was about using typescript, which is a pre-processor for Javascript. It allows you to create OO code in a way JS does not. The author is honest enough to ask why one would use this, and his answer is so that other developers in your organization, who do not know javascript well, will have an easier time following what you are doing in JS. Learn a new language, add time and money to every project, so that people will learn to read Typescript much easier than they can figure out your javascript code. Egads.
>
>Another article was about to create collections from data sources. Lots and lots of code to create classes that can read a data row and create an object in memory to manipulate. Egads again - SCATTER NAME oObject anyone? Even his extensive classes would be mjaybe 10 lines of VFP code.
>
>Another article was about using PHP to access MySQL data. The code was about 5 times longer than VFP code. Here I am willing to give a little - the requirement was to be able to run the code on Linux and Windows servers not under the client's control. I assume they have enough control to install PHP, so the requirement circumsances beg an explanation. So on second thought I may or may not give a little.
>
>The only article not like this was an article on writing code to control a microprocessor device. The article was interesting and the code examples simple (too simple, anyone could figure that code out themselves) but it broke out of the make work for ourselves mode.
>
>Logic is out the window. We learn and want to use new things for no reason other than they are new and they give us "marketable skills." The majority of IT projects finish well behind schedule and over budget -- if they finish. Fortunately, there are still some people who work to give the client what they need.