>I wonder, has anyone built the same application in both VB and VFP and compared? I realize this would be considered a waste but seeing how many times this comes up (VFP vs VB) it would be extremely useful. Which is better for what? A concrete example. I mean, hasn't this been done on even one enterprise solution for comparison?
>Thanks

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2 stories (both mine). Of course, I don't think this is a perfect comparison, because a lot depends on the experience and knowledge of those involved. And you have to understand that I am biased: I hate VB! Personnaly, I'd rather devellop in Delphi than VB, but when data handling is involved, I haven't found anything VFP can't leave in the dust!

1) I was assigned to an small internal project, using VB6 + SQLServer7. The project was already underway for some time, I don't know how long. But, basically, the main form's look was done and what was left to be done was the actual logic and "support" functions, such as handling security, etc. There were 3 of us on that project.

It's a little of a wild guess here, but I would say that this project took 8 man/months to complete. I have to say that during that time, the database structure was done as well.

After 2 months, the project was mostly complete and we send it to the user for testing. During the testing, I had nothing to do, so I decided to make my first try at accessing a SQL Server with VFP, so I thought rewriting the application in question would be a good start.

I never finished the VFP app, but I had the main form working, so I would say I had done something like 50% of the project. I was accessing and updating the same data than the VB program. Since I already had the structure done for me, I would say that what I had done must have been the equivalent of what had been done in 2 man/months.

It took me 2 days. And I was alone.



2) I was overhearing 3 people talking about how they could do a specific thing in VB. They were coming up with solutions and their drawbacks. They came to the conclusion that they could only implement part of what they wanted. It really wasn't a big thing: they wanted a grid, with one column per day (on a period), and have weekends display as blue in the grid.

They must have discussed for about half an hour. I decided to take 5 minutes and programed a quick form in VFP with those blue weekends. I turned to them and asked if this is what they wanted, telling them that I had done it in 5 minutes in VFP

Dev1: "Yes, but now can you have another grid like that just below?"

Me: "Sure!" (Copy and Paste)

(Silence...)

Dev2: "Count me out if you're doing that in VFP!"

Dev3: "Why can't we do this in VB?"

Dev1: "There's Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro... Why isn't there a Visual SQL?"

I felt I had won! :)