>How much is that sort of longevity worth? Perhaps you can answer this one: had a developer written a form-based app in Windev in (say) 2009, would there be pressure to rewrite for some of the benefits now available in WinDev 23 or are the same old faithfuls as good as the day they were written ?
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>How about a form written today? Is there an expectation to keep rewriting as each new idea is rolled out?

First - you do not have to upgrade to latest release. That is only necessary if:

=> 1) you want PC Soft to provide FREE support on a bug you think you found in their product. They will not help investigate bugs for free in older versions. Free support only applies to current version. However, you can buy a support agreement from them to handle previous version if you need that.

=> 2) you want to upgrade in order to get new features for whatever reason. If neither of these are required then you do not need to upgrade.

Second - newer version will run any previous project but it will convert the project into the newer version. That conversion is not reversible. Easy solution - keep the older WinDev version installed and the new WinDev version. Convert/upgrade a project only if required. And if you do, then common sense dictates you do so under proper product upgrade practices. Nothing special here.

Third - if you do upgrade because you want to use new features then obviously some coding or modifications via the IDE might be required to implement those new features. Some features, however, come through without any effort from the coder. Just converting a form, for example, will give the form any new functionality that forms have such as users being able to go into "design" mode and move controls around to suit their preferences, for example. Or, for example, grids which will have functionality built into them without coding such as being able to export a column, row, of matrix of rows/columns to Excel. That is all built-in - no coding required. There are many such things.

Fourth - your specific question "would there be pressure to rewrite for some of the benefits now available in WinDev 23" - how can I answer this? There is no pressure if you dont want the new benefits, obviously. If you want new features you upgrade. Simple choice.



>There are some glitches on Windows 10: VFP drag-drop has visual artifact and reporting had some real issues if screen scaling is in use as is increasingly common as 4K screens are normalized. Picture, if you will, a Chinese developer quietly fixing these issues so that VFP becomes flawless. Not saying it has happened, but imagine if it had.
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>This is not hostility towards Windev, I'm actually interested. My POV is that I'm millions of $ better off through not rewriting everything as often as would have been needed in the Visual Rube Goldberg world and if WinDev offers that too, I'm interested.

We upgrade WinDev and WebDev every year because (1) we like new features - some are actually useful and the IDE often has many great enhancements, (2) I want free support (not that we use it much at all), (3) especially for WebDev we upgrade because of the endless changes to browsers so we want to make sure our web stuff remains compatible with end-users, (4) especially WebDev again because of the rapid developments in WebDev from PC Soft because it is a newer product than WinDev.

I have heard / read about some developers still running apps they wrote in WinDev 5. We are now on version 23. That means about 18 years old working on 1 version per year.

I dont mind any hostility to WinDev even if there was some. Non issue for me. I know we have upgraded all our apps to state-of-the art front-end, simplified our lives, increased speed of development, and all sorts of good things. And the learning curve when I look back at it was really no big deal. The thing I missed the most was the easy answers I always got on the UT i.e. I had to work a little harder myself to experiment to find answers. But every single thing we did in VFP we do in WinDev and faster and easier and user-interface slicker.