Although choice of platform is a different topic per se, it does seem as if Barry and I would agree,


>Hi Tuvia,
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>I have refrained from these conversations, since I've identified (as a volunteer) with Lianja, and think that folks should find their way to Lianja when the time is right for them, rather than be bombarded with what's already been said. This discussion, however, hits right at what Lianja brings to those who, like yourself, know that what VFP offered was in fact rare in the software development world. The way I would describe it is twofold: first, that working with data is at the core of VFP, not an add-on; second, that VFP got the level of abstraction right, for it's time.
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>The same two priorities apply to Lianja. Everything in Lianja is built around a core that involves working with data, even more so than VFP. Have a cursor and want to modify it's properties?
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>loCA = cursoradapter("myAlias")
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>No filling in of properties is required.
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>In many ways, Liana provides the ease of working with data present in VFP, along with a step forward in the level of abstraction (less work, with just as much functionality).
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>That Lianja is also built to work with the current software context (desktop apps on Windows, Mac and Linux; browser apps indistinguishable from desktop apps; mobile embedded browser apps a la Phonegap; and native device apps, a la QT5; Windows or Linux servers; highly scalable in clusters with realtime replication and failover to clusters), working from the same codebase, is where I think VFP would have gone, had it been continued.
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>Lianja is not perfect. It continues to get better, however, on a time scale, for the most part, of days and weeks rather than months or years, with much of the input coming from developers. It's one heck of a 1.0 release.
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>For the, e.g., PHP developer, all the VFP-style data commands are available, no extra coding required. And all the PHP, Python, and Javascript standard libraries (and a few JS libraries) are built-in, and accessible from VFP scripting, including automatic marshalling of objects, both ways.
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>So while we might differ in our conclusion, I wanted to let you know the same observations you have made led Barry to create Lianja, and led me to pick Lianja as where I want to be as VFP fades away (especially from the Enterprise market).
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>best regards,
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>Hank
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>>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.