>I am with you 100% and I have VFP experience going back to July 95.
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>>As a slightly foxpro newbie (18 months) I will give my opinions. (If anyone cares)
>>I come having 6 years doing pascal/object pascal (Delphi) and about as much C/C++ experience as FoxPro. I used to get all emotional that Delphi was the best tool in the world. I try real hard not to let emotions get involved in my programming. I chose my present job not because of programming tools.
>>I know that I will get flamed for this, but I do think that C++ and Delphi are better than VFP. 2 main reasons:
>>1) MS does a poor job of fixing the 'bugs' in VFP and MS is the only vendor responsible for it. Whereas with C++ you have a slew of vendors (or even GNU) that support it, so if one vendor does not live up to expectations you can switch. Not to mention cross-platform support. Try asking MS to release VFP for Linux/OS2/other Unixes. As far as Delphi goes, Borland does a decent job of keeping up with the 'bugs' and development of it, but yes, you are somewhat stuck with that vendor and Windows. (There is GNU pascal, but as far as I know it is not that developed yet.)
>>2) VFP has limitations. You can create objects in C++ to do the same things that VFP does and a whole lot more. (What do you think most of the ActiveX stuff is written in?) Not to mention the speed difference. VFP reports, and forms are all tables. While this not bad, it is slow since you have the database overhead to create forms and reports. There are toolkits for Delphi that have direct access to VFP tables and give the programmer XBase functions. (check out Topaz)
>>I know that I will probably get flamed for what I said, but programmers need to evaluate tools more on what they can do, how easily it can be done, the limitations of them, and the vendor support.
>>I appreciate the support that I have gotten from some of the people on this forum and do not want to create ill will. I may still be programming in VFP for a few more years, but I try not to let feelings over a tool cloud judgement over how well it stacks up to others.

Mr. Dhani:
Regarding the first point you mention, all is because the M$ politics towards VFP. But you are right in some degree.
In the second, in a friendly way, I challenge you to write a complete database windows application from the scratch, in C++, side by with another programmer doing the same thing in VFP. And let's see who finish first and who has a better, faster (handling data) application at the end. This is using only the tools in each product, not external libraries, or if you wish even using any libraries o tools you want. If you want to develop a game or a specialized application like a tools for inspect networking protocols, or computer bios, go ahead with visual C++.
I'm not saying all this because I love the product that much, because during my time as a foxpro developer (8 years, 12 as a programmer with other tools), I have made this challenge to programmers that use differents tools (C,C++,Pascal, VB). Today all of them work with VFP, and one of them is even my partner in SoftLand.
I'm sure many people in this forum have similar experiences.


Nelson Marmol
SoftLand, Inc
Miami, FL